Fix STATUS_NDIS_PM_PROTOCOL_OFFLOAD_LIST_FULL (0xC0232004) on Windows

Quick answer: Disable IPv4/IPv6 ARP and NS offloads in the adapter's Power Management tab — the driver is trying to register more low-power offloads than the NIC firmware can hold, and Windows bugchecks with 0xC0232004.

This one shows up when a network driver asks NDIS to register a protocol offload (ARP, NS, or a Wake-on-LAN pattern) and the adapter's internal slot table is already full. NDIS has a fixed-size list per miniport, and every offload from every bound protocol gets a slot. When the list overflows, NDIS returns STATUS_NDIS_PM_PROTOCOL_OFFLOAD_LIST_FULL, and depending on the driver that can be logged, shown as a yellow bang in Device Manager, or taken all the way to a bugcheck 0x000000D1 or 0x0000009F during sleep transitions.

I've seen this most often on laptops with both Wi-Fi and Ethernet active, VPN filter drivers still bound to a disconnected adapter, and on Realtek RTL8168/8111 and older Intel I219-V NICs where the firmware only supports two or three offload slots. It also flares up after a Windows feature update re-enables offloads you'd previously turned off. The user story is almost always the same: the machine drops into Modern Standby and never wakes, or it blue screens with a network stack reference the moment the lid closes.

What you'll need before you start

• Local admin rights. Adapter power settings need elevation.
• Know which adapter is the primary network path. Disable offloads on the wired NIC first if both are present.
• Fifteen minutes, and a willingness to reboot more than once.

Step 1 — Confirm the failing adapter

Open Device Manager (right-click Start, pick Device Manager). Expand Network adapters. Look for a device with a yellow exclamation mark. If you don't see one, open an elevated Command Prompt and run:

pnputil /enum-devices /problem

You should see a line like Problem Code: 10 or a status referencing NDIS. Note the exact adapter name — for example, "Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller" or "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-V". You'll need that name in a later step.

Step 2 — Disable protocol offloads in the GUI

1. Right-click the adapter in Device Manager and choose Properties.
2. Click the Power Management tab.
3. Uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. Yes, all of it. You'll re-enable this later once you've isolated which offload is overflowing the list.
4. Click OK. The Properties window closes.

After clicking OK you should see the yellow bang disappear within a few seconds, or the adapter will reset. If Windows immediately re-flags it, move on — you've got a filter driver holding an offload slot.

Step 3 — Clear the offloads from the advanced tab

Back in the adapter's Properties, switch to the Advanced tab. The exact list varies by vendor, but you're looking for entries with these names. Set each to Disabled:

• ARP Offload
• NS Offload
• IPv4 Checksum Offload (leave this Enabled if you're just chasing the PM error — it doesn't consume a PM slot)
• Wake on Magic Packet
• Wake on Pattern Match
• Shutdown Wake-On-Lan

Click OK. Windows will reset the adapter. Expect the network to drop for two or three seconds, then come back. If the error is gone from Device Manager, you've cleared the overflow.

Heads up: on Intel I219-V with driver 12.19.x, the "NS Offload" option is hidden unless you tick "Show hidden options" in the Advanced tab. If you can't find it, that's why.

Step 4 — Nuke it from the command line

GUI toggles don't always stick, especially after a driver update. Run these from an elevated PowerShell. First, find the interface index:

Get-NetAdapter | Format-Table Name, InterfaceIndex, InterfaceDescription

You'll get a table. Grab the InterfaceIndex for the problematic adapter — say it's 14. Now disable the PM offloads:

Set-NetAdapterPowerManagement -Name "Ethernet" -ArpOffload Disabled -NSOffload Disabled -DeviceSleepOnDisconnect Disabled -WakeOnMagicPacket Disabled -WakeOnPattern Disabled

After running this you should get no output — silence is success. Run Get-NetAdapterPowerManagement -Name "Ethernet" to verify each property reads Disabled. If any still show Enabled, the driver is ignoring the setting and you've got a vendor-specific problem (see the alternative fixes below).

Step 5 — Remove stale filter drivers

VPN clients, QoS packet schedulers, and third-party firewalls all bind filter drivers to your NIC. Each one can register its own offload. List them with:

Get-NetAdapterBinding -Name "Ethernet" | Where-Object Enabled -eq $true

You'll see a table of protocols and their component IDs. Anything from a VPN you don't use anymore — Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN's tap adapter, older Fortinet clients — unbind it:

Disable-NetAdapterBinding -Name "Ethernet" -ComponentID ms_implat

Swap ms_implat for whatever ComponentID you want gone. Reboot afterward. This is the step most people skip and then wonder why the error comes back twenty minutes into standby.

Step 6 — Update or roll back the NIC driver

Right-click the adapter in Device Manager, choose Update driver, then Browse my computer, then Let me pick from a list. If a previous driver version is listed, try that one — vendor drivers regress this specific offload accounting more often than people realize.

For Realtek, the 10.68 driver from the vendor's site is more reliable here than the 10.72 that Windows Update pushes. For Intel I219-V, stick with 12.19.2.0. The 12.19.3.0 release broke the offload counter on some Dell Latitude 5420 units — I've seen it personally.

If that doesn't work

Disable Modern Standby for the Wi-Fi adapter

On some Surface and XPS machines, the Wi-Fi driver registers offloads on behalf of the Ethernet driver during connected standby. Disable this from the network adapter's Advanced tab: set Selective Suspend to Disabled.

Reset the network stack

Nuclear option, but it clears leftover NDIS state from uninstalled drivers:

netcfg -d

This removes every network device and protocol binding. You'll reboot into a clean slate with only the built-in drivers. Your IP settings, Wi-Fi passwords, and VPN profiles are gone. Only do this if you're prepared to reconfigure everything.

Check for a firmware update

On some Intel i225-V boards (the 2.5GbE ones), the NIC firmware shipped before revision 1.68 had a bug where the offload table was sized to 4 instead of 8. BIOS updates from Dell, HP, and ASUS between mid-2022 and early 2023 fix this. Check your OEM's support page with your exact service tag.

Prevention

Once you've got it stable, re-enable only Wake on Magic Packet and leave the rest off. ARP and NS offloads save a truly trivial amount of power — we're talking single-digit milliwatts — and they're the first thing to blow up on a driver update. If you've got a laptop and you actually care about battery, fix the screen timeout and the CPU power plan instead. Those matter. Offload slots don't. And before you install the next major Windows feature update, export your adapter settings with Get-NetAdapterPowerManagement | Export-Clixml so you can diff them afterward — because Microsoft has re-enabled them on people twice now.