Removing ghost NICs from VMs

After rebuilding a VM in Hyper-V and reusing the old VHD you are left not being able to use the old NIC name and IP address.

To fix this open a CMD prompt with elevated previledges and type in:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

start devmgmt.msc

Once the device manager opens you need to select 'showhidden devices' from the view menu. Expend the Network cards and remove any grayed out NICs.

Reference:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269155