Ghost Network Interface Cards

Recently, I imported a bunch of virtual machines.  After the import was complete, only one nic showed up under network adapters but when making any changes to the static IP's a warning was shown stating duplicate information.  After doing some digging, I found that there were actually 2 NICs in the system, but only one was being display.   I tried multiple ways to get the second card removed, but had no success until I came across a few posts mentioning devcon.

Using devcon you can perform the following command line options to remove the ghosted nic:

• Run this command to list all the network hardware
•  devcon findall =net  
• This will output a bunch of information in the format PCI\VEN_xxxxx : Adapter Name
• Copy the string before the colon.
• Run the devcon command to remove the nic
• devcon -r remove "@PCI\Ven_xxxxxx"

The biggest issue I ran into was getting devcon for the correct architecture.  The inital post I read linked to Microsoft for the x86 and ia64, but my systems were running x64.  So, I managed to find the tool on a Windows Server installation media for x64.  But I have also found it online as part of the Windows Driver Kit with instruction on how to extract it here How to Obtain the Current Version of Device Console Utility (DevCon.exe)