Question : Windows Server 2008 drops its static IP Address and renews by DHCP

Good day to one and all!!!

I searched the forums already, but given the nature of this very random fault found it difficult to even get the search criteria right.

We are fairly new to Windows server 2008 & Ipv6 arena.

We recently deployed 400+ HP DL180 G5 servers with Windows 2008 Server, to act as NAS backup servers, running Symantec Backup Exec 12.5.

Problem
On some (not all) we have been finding that the Static IP address that we have provided on IPv4 seems to drop its connection and renews the address from the DHCP server. The only parameter the IPv4 setting retains is the Default Gateway.

There is only one physical network card installed on the server, but when you check the LAN settings the network card will now be called Local Area Connection # 2.

To resolve the issue we can complete one of two things....

Short Fix,
Create DHCP reservation on the network card MAC address, that way when the problem occurrs at worst it pick up the correct IP Address.
Disable the IPv6 option on the network card. Also un tick the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option in Power Managment.

Longer Fix,
Same as above but the following is also completed.
Delete any network card installtion from the registry and uninstall the network card from device manager, reboot the server and re enter the correct IP info. It seems to have resolved the issue, but is still being verified.

Whilst I think we have a temporary solution, the reason for the post is to better understand the cause of why the card seems to reinstall itself and renew the IP address from DHCP.

Thought I would put it out around the community to see if anybody else had experienced this, or it is a common issue we justy dont know about , or indeed we have missed something obvious.

I thank you all for taking the time to consider this in advance.

Answer : Windows Server 2008 drops its static IP Address and renews by DHCP

Think I have a solution for this, its out of date drivers for the NIC, the ones in use are 3 years old, HP released new drivers in May.  

Going to test this in a few of the sites and it will hopefully resolve the issue.
Thank you jah for your interest, I cannot believe I hadn't already checked to see if there was updated drivers already. We have already had to update the BIOS version on all 400 servers to help with noisy fans.