Node Auto ID not firing requestNodeId()

[elmezie]

I start my node with

gw.begin();

And I would assume that would send out a message to the controller to request an id. But that does not appear to happen.

MySensors.cpp shows my nc.nodeID as

Node id (0) : 0

So the code in MySensors.cpp, never fires the requestNodeId() function to retrieve an id since nc.nodeId = 0 and not AUTO.
How do I get nc.nodeId to equal AUTO. I am not seeing anywhere in the MySensors code where that would get written to EEPROM. Am I doing something wrong? Overlooking something?

nc.nodeId == AUTO && isValidParent(nc.parentNodeId)) 

		if (_nodeId != AUTO) {
			// Set static id
			nc.nodeId = _nodeId;
			// Save static id in eeprom
			hw_writeConfig(EEPROM_NODE_ID_ADDRESS, _nodeId);
		} else if (nc.nodeId == AUTO && isValidParent(nc.parentNodeId)) {
			// Try to fetch node-id from gateway
			requestNodeId();
		}

[hek]

Do you have something in your eeprom already blocking? Try clearing it using the provided ClearEprom sketch in examples.