I faced the problem described in this question about an ASUS laptop (How to repair the checksum of the non-volatile memory (NVM) of Intel Ethernet Controller I219-V of an ASUS laptop?) however my machine is a desktop with an Asus Maximus IX Hero motherboard, BIOS version 0906. Even though it has an onboard Intel network adapter, Ubuntu 16.10 would report no network devices available, with eth0
missing from /etc/network/interfaces
and connection would be impossible. Symptoms were identical:
$ dmesg | grep e1000e
e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 3.2.6-k
e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999 - 2015 Intel Corporation.
e1000e 0000:00:1f.6: Interrupt Throttling Rate (ints/sec) set to dynamic conservative mode
e1000e 0000:00:1f.6: The NVM Checksum Is Not Valid
e1000e: probe of 0000:00:1f.6 failed with error -5
Instead of patching e1000e, as described in the accepted answer for the other question (https://superuser.com/a/1106641/716669) I applied Intel’s bootutil utility directly, as suggested in two other answers for the same question (https://superuser.com/a/1170175/716669) (https://superuser.com/a/1190558/716669) and the problem was solved after a full day of struggling.
sudo ./bootutil64e -NIC 1 -defcfg
Although I believe all solutions are probably valid, I’m writing this question specifically for Asus Maximus IX Hero owners encountering the same problem, to document that the bootutil command works cleanly for this motherboard. (Answer shall provide detailed steps.)