​Method 1 – INF Driver Installation

Method 1 is recommended for single-port testing, and for quick and easy driver installations outside of the Intel® PROSet GUI.

Any method used to install or update the driver causes enumeration of the driver stack at the Windows OS level, which affects all Ethernet devices on the server.

INF driver installations are used most often within Intel engineering teams and validation teams to update drivers. If performance issues are observed using Intel® PROSet driver installations, try an INF driver installation to see if it makes a difference in performance.

Method 1 requires separate steps to update driver settings, post-driver installation, through Task Manager or PowerShell commands.

To install or update a driver:

1. ​Download this driver pack for the latest drivers and software.

   Intel® Ethernet Adapter Complete Driver Pack

   Note: This driver pack includes the drivers and firmware for all Intel® Ethernet products for all OS's, and may take several minutes to download.
2. Extract theRelease_​<version>.zip file and locate the driver.
   • ​The icea driver is located under Release_​<version>\PROCGB\Winx64.
   • The i40ea/i40eb drivers are located under Release_​<version>\PRO40GB\Winx64.
3. ​Install the driver:
   1. Open Device Manager and locate the device to update.
   2. Right-click the device and select the option, Update Driver.
   3. Select Browse my computer for driver.
   4. Point the installer to:

      Release_​<version>\PROCGB\Winx64

      or

      Release_​<version>\PRO40GB\Winx64

   5. The installer installs the correct driver for the OS.
   6. ​Use the Task Manager or PowerShell commands to update the driver settings. See Performance Tuning with Intel Driver Settings (i40ea/i40eb/icea).