Network Adapter that can't be uninstalled

[Cec Britton]

I recently switched from satellite to cable ISPs. On satellite I used the simplest of "networks". Modem to NIC 1 in gateway to second NIC in gateway to NIC in second computer. All connections via Cat 5 patch cables with ICS active on NIC to modem.

I couldn't get that config. to work correctly with cable so I decided to clean out old satellite items and put my Netgear RT 314 router into the picture. That also didn't work because of DNS problems in the registry so I looked at the registry. I found a large sprinkling of network adapter entries in the registry. Some of the entries are for non-existent adapters (from failed installs I imagine). I went to Device Manager and uninstalled all devices (hidden and unhidden) that appeared to have been associated with the satellite connection. I was unable to delete registry keys for the devices that seem to be bogus.

At this point the second NIC (gateway to client)in the PC connected to the cable modem was inoperable (yellow ! in Device Manager). I now tried to uninstall the NIC and got the message that the command failed because the device may be needed to boot the computer.

I physically removed the NIC and went through the whole routine again and ended up at the same point. I have a NIC that refuses to be uninstalled via Control Panel.

I have looked at the MS Knowledge Base for help but came away more confused because none of the answers seem to be W2K specific.

If anyone knows how to purge the Windows 2kPro registry of the networking garbage I'd love to hear from you.


Thanks in advance
Cec Britton

[Ghost_Hacker]

You may find these threads interesting.

TEK-TIPS (http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/67/lev3/70/pid/616/qid/496846)

Disabling Auto IP-address generation (http://www.wown.info/j_helmig/w2knoaip.htm) Even though this page deals with auto IP assigning, it also has good info on where the reg keys for your adapter are, it should prove to be helpfull.


You will pretty much be looking at this reg key
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI and deleting any subkey who's DeviceDesc equals the nic your trying to get rid of. ( you might want to backup the key first)


Good Luck :)

[Cec Britton]

Thanks for the reply Ghost Hacker. The case on the Tek Tips board is an exact match for my problem with one exception. I have the two NICs in the computer and one of them is apparently working okay since I'm able to talk to the cable modem through it. On the other hand when I just looked at driver properties for the two NICs on this machine I found that neither one shows the NETFA311ND5.inf file as being a driver file when it should be there. So, maybe the card I thought to be working correctly is just a pass through for the internet connection with no networking capability involved.

I am just about to see if I can reinstall the .inf file in the WINNT directory and get it to initialize/install. If this works I'll let you know. I'd really like to clean up the registry and get rid of a couple of old artifacts for entries that I know to be bad but I'm really afraid to do it because of the possibility of losing all functionality. Of course I do have a good backup that I can revert to if I need to.

Thanks again.

Cec

[Cec Britton]

I just went in and renewed the .inf file for the stubborn NIC and that fixed the whole thing. Ghost Hacker I can't really tell you how much I appreciate your reply and the pointer to the fix. Now I feel like a real dummy for not seeing something so obviously wrong as a missing driver file. Your're a gem!:)