Uninstall hidden network and other devices on Windows

We just moved a lot of our physical server to a virtualization infrastructure. In doing so we wanted to use the same IP-addresses on the virtual servers. That is not a problem, but once you virtualize your server your hardware bound network card is not in use anymore and you will have to replace it with the virtual network card.

But when you address your IP-address to the Network adapter you will get a message saying, that your IP-address is already assigned to another network adapter and because it is not available physically it will also not show in the network connection window! Great, so what to do?

The solution is to find a way to make those hidden network adapters available so we can uninstall them.

1. Open up a Terminal window with “cmd” (start/run)
2. Set a environmental variable with “set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1″.
3. Then type “devmgmt.msc” and the Windows Device Manager Console will appear.
4. Within the Windows Device Manager Console choose “Show hidden devices”.
5. You should now be able to see all hidden devices, such as the interfering network adapter and uninstall it.

As always with Windows, you have to reboot the machine to actually make it all work.

Hope this helps someone, it drove us crazy for some time.