I recently removed some VPN software from my system because I no longer used it, but the virtual network adapter created by this software was not automatically removed. When I tried to remove the network adapter from the list of adapters, the uninstall option was grayed out.
After a little troubleshooting, I was finally able to remove the network adapter from my Windows 10 system. In this article, I will go over all the different methods you can try, from the simplest to the more technical ones. If you need to edit the registry, be sure to back up the registry first.
So, in particular, here is the problem I am having. I opened Control Panel, went to Network and Sharing Center and clicked “Change adapter settings”. When I tried to right-click the adapter I wanted to delete, the Delete option was not available.
First method – use Device Manager
The first thing you can try is to open Device Manager (click Start and type device manager), expand Network Adapters, and then right-click the network adapter you want to remove.
Here you will see the “Remove device” option. Hopefully this shouldn’t be greyed out. If yes, go to the next method. When you select “Remove Device”, another window will appear asking you to confirm the removal.
You will also see the option to remove the driver software for the device. If you want to completely remove the network adapter, I suggest choosing this option to remove the driver as well. If all goes well, you should see that the adapter has been removed both from Device Manager and from the list of network adapters in Control Panel.
If you don’t see your device listed, try clicking View and then Show Hidden Devices.
The second method – delete the network profile
We can also try deleting the network profile through the command line, and then try method 1 again. First, you need to open an elevated command prompt by clicking Start, typing CMD, and then right-clicking Command Prompt and choosing Run as administrator “.
Now enter the following command to see all wired (Ethernet) adapters:
netsh lan show profiles
If you need to remove the wireless adapter, enter this command:
netsh wlan show profiles
If you receive an error that the Wired or Wireless AutoConfiguration service is not running, click Start, type services.msc, right-click the appropriate service, and then click Start.
Now when you run the command, you should see a list of profiles. In my case, I only have one profile on this computer.
Then enter the following command which will remove the desired interface.
netsh lan delete profile interface = “InterfaceName”
Again, if it’s a wireless interface, use wlan instead of lan. The interface name appears at the top of each header (Profile in the interface name) when you ran the show profiles command. After deleting the profile, restart your computer and try method 1 again.
Third method – remove adapter settings via registry
In addition to deleting the network profile, you can also try deleting adapter settings via the registry. After removing the settings, you can go back to method 1 and try to remove the adapter. To remove the settings, open the registry editor (click Start and type regedit.msc) and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Services – Tcpip – Parameters – Interfaces
You will see several items listed with a long series of random numbers. If you click on each of them, you will see the IP address assigned to that network adapter.
You can confirm which network adapter corresponds to this registry key by opening a command prompt (Start and type cmd) and typing ipconfig.
As you can see, the Ethernet adapter is the one with the IP address 192.168.1.233. Thus, you must delete the key in the “Interfaces” section that starts with {73123f2a-ad10-4f4b-900e }. If you click on another interface, one of them will have an IP of 192.168.247.1, which corresponds to the VMWare network adapter on the computer. Again, this removes only the adapter settings, not the adapter itself. Restart your computer and try method 1 again.
Third method – reset network settings
In Windows 10, you can also reset network settings, which will remove all network adapters and reinstall them. You will have to change the settings for these adapters, but this will help remove obsolete or old network adapters.
To do this, click “Start”, then “Settings”, and then – “Network and Internet”.
Click Status in the left menu and then scroll down to the bottom until you see Network Reset. You will be prompted to confirm and then your computer will restart. If the corresponding adapter is missing after a reboot, then great! If not, try method 1 again.
Fourth method – disable in the BIOS
If the network adapter in question is built into the motherboard, you can also try disabling the network adapter in the BIOS. Read my previous post on how to access BIOS if you don’t know how.
Once you enter the BIOS, you will have to look for the section that allows you to disable the hardware. Usually you will see something like Onboard Gbit or Onboard LAN with the option to turn off.
Hopefully one of these methods helped you get rid of the old or outdated network adapter on your Windows computer. If you are still having problems, feel free to leave comments and I will try to help. Enjoy!
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