manually remove NIC entries in registry and redetect NICs

[Thane Campbell]

Because of some flakey behaviour introduced after a a brief and failed
experiment with adaptive load balancing on a dual nic team adapter I would
like to remove all of the NIC entries and let the OS properly re-detect the
NICs with no previous configuration information retained. The system is a
Windows 2000 member server running Exchange 2000 all patched.

My intention would be able to return the stack to the default configution.
In the past on other machines perhaps I have been too agressive in removing
registry entries, but I have not had much success in successfully removing
the devices without totally breaking the ability of the OS to redetect the
NICs.

I have searched everywhere for a procedure and not found what I need. Can
anyone help? Thanks in advance.

[Wayne Tilton]

=?Utf-8?B?VGhhbmUgQ2FtcGJlbGw=?=
<ThaneCampbell@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
news:A12CF2FE-EF45-4871-9A2C-4B109A0F0586@microsoft.com:

> Because of some flakey behaviour introduced after a a brief and failed
> experiment with adaptive load balancing on a dual nic team adapter I
> would like to remove all of the NIC entries and let the OS properly
> re-detect the NICs with no previous configuration information
> retained. The system is a Windows 2000 member server running Exchange
> 2000 all patched.
>
> My intention would be able to return the stack to the default
> configution. In the past on other machines perhaps I have been too
> agressive in removing registry entries, but I have not had much
> success in successfully removing the devices without totally breaking
> the ability of the OS to redetect the NICs.
>
> I have searched everywhere for a procedure and not found what I need.
> Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.
>
>

This is how I do it:

Open a command prompt and enter:

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1

then, in the same command prompt, launch device manager:

devmgmt.msc

In device manager, select View, Show Hidden Devices, then expand the
Network Adapters node and delete all the unwanted devices (they should be
grayed out).

Reboot and Windows should redetect all your NICS devices.

This always works for me, your mileage may vary so take a backup first!

HTH,

Wayne Tilton