NIC Hidden from network connections?

[Quickdraw]

Hi,

I had installed 3 NIC's on my guest OS and assigned an address to all 3. I then removed one of them and tried to assign the removed address to another remaining NIC's. I received the following error message; "The IP address x.x.x.x you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter. #3. #3 NIC is hidden from the network Connections folder because it is not physically in the computer." When I look at the config file, I see the 3rd NIC is in the file but marked as not present. Can I just remove the line that refers to it in the config file? Will that really remove it from the guest? I also noticed this when I have done conversions as well.

Thanks

-Patrick

[MR-T]

It's in the registry of the guest VM.

You can either run regedit and search for it, or select show hidden devices from the device manager and then remove the greyed out card.

[MR-T · Accepted solution]

Here's my steps for removing hidden devices.

After a physical conversation a number of “stale devices” will exist in the new virtual machine. These are hardware devices which are no longer required.

Windows 2000 & 2003

To identify which devices are no longer physically installed on your virtual machine, use the Microsoft environment variable devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices. This is explained in the Microsoft article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539

1. From the command prompt, type:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices = 1

2. Start the search. Type:

start devmgmt.msc

3. From the Device Manager, list the devices.

Select: View > Show hidden devices.

4. Deinstall the listed devices:

Select the device and uninstall it from the Device Manager.