In the "Device Manager" on the computer, many people have names such as "#2" and "#3" behind the network card. If your computer has only one network card, this indicates the driver of the NIC.ProgramYou have been installed on your computer at least twice. Why is this happening?
This is because you have changed the expansion slot of the NIC. For intentional or unintentional purposes, you may change the NIC from one slot to another in the chassis, even if you did not uninstall the driver of the NIC before the slot, after the change, the system still requires you to reinstall the driver of the device. For the plug-and-play Nic, the system will automatically install the driver of the device, the same driver of the same Nic is installed repeatedly. The NIC installed before the slot is changed. After the slot is changed, the driver still exists in the system. However, due to the loss of support for the NIC, all NICs can only be hidden in the system like "shadow. We call these NICs a" shadow "network. After the network adapter is replaced, the driver is installed again, because its "shadow" already exists in the system, you can only add "#2" and "#3" after the name of the "shadow" Nic.
The "shadow" Nic may sometimes cause troubles to your system. For example, if you assign an IP address to the "shadow" Nic, when you change the slot and assign the same IP address to the NIC again, the system will prompt that the IP address you have allocated has been used by another network card in the system and you are required to re-allocate the IP address for the network card.
Cico prompt: the "shadow" Nic is actually disabled in the system. When you assign an IP address to the NIC, a prompt is displayed, indicating that the IP address currently allocated conflicts with the IP address of the "shadow" Nic, you can force the IP address to be allocated to the network adapter by ignoring the prompt. However, I suggest you use the method described below to completely delete the "shadow" Nic.
How can I delete the shadow Nic? Someone said that by selecting "View> show hidden devices" in "Device Manager", these "shadow" NICS will be displayed, and then double-click the NIC to open the "properties" dialog box for the NIC, on the drivers tab of the dialog box, click Uninstall to delete the shadow Nic. The above statement cannot stand the test of practice, because in this way, we simply cannot see the "shadow" Nic, let alone uninstall the driver of the "shadow" Nic. Next, let's look at the method for deleting the "shadow" Nic.
Click "run" in the "Start" menu, and then enter the "cmd" command in the "run" dialog box to open the Command Prompt window. first enter the command "set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices = 1 ", press enter and enter the command "Start devmgmt. MSC to open "Device Manager". Now, select "View> show hidden devices" on the menu bar of the "Device Manager" to see the hidden "shadow" Nic, double-click the "shadow" Nic to open the "properties" dialog box of the NIC, switch to the "drivers" tab, and click "Uninstall ", the "shadow" Nic will be permanently deleted from your computer.