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My ethernet adapter is named "Ethernet 2" and there's already a device named "Ethernet"?

Anonymous
2020-05-15T22:53:12+00:00

Hi! In Control Panel, under Network Connections (type Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network Connections into the "address bar" in Control Panel), I have three devices listed. One is my WiFi, one is my Ethernet, and the other is a VPN I use. Only Ethernet matters for this issue.

You can see in the screenshot above that the only Ethernet device I have is named "Ethernet 2". I was curious as to why it had a 2 at the end so I tried renaming it to just "Ethernet" but got an error (see screenshot below).

I've tried running 'ipconfig' in the Command Prompt but there were no devices named Ethernet. You can see in the first screenshot that Control Panel also shows no devices named Ethernet. What's preventing me from renaming the only Ethernet device on my system to "Ethernet" instead of "Ethernet 2"?

I should add that this is a relatively fresh install (I think it was three days ago that I reinstalled as I screwed something up and Windows wouldn't boot).

Any help is appreciated.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Internet and connectivity

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-18T21:28:01+00:00

    Have you tried this one..

    1. Remove adapter from: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkSetup2\Interfaces
    2. use https://github.com/jschicht/RunAsTI to grand needed permissions

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-18T21:03:21+00:00

    In reality, the name of the Ethernet adapter device is inconsequential.

    Yeah, but it just bugs me.

    Brian Tillman is right ... it honestly makes no difference and affects nothing. It's just a name. When you lose your internet connection for some reason, which happens to everyone from time to time, and Windows has to re-establish your network setup, it adds a number to the end of the name. Because computers aren't smart enough to realize that this is the same network as before. Trust me, it's not called artificial intelligence for nothing. 😉

    In general, you mustn't let cosmetic items 'bug' you. People make a mess of perfectly good computers by trying to fix things that don't need fixing. Please don't be one of those people.

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  2. Brian Tillman 24,860 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2020-05-16T02:11:04+00:00

    Here's something I found that may help: in Device Manager, click View>Show hidden devices. Expand "Network adapters" and uninstall all Ethernet adapters you see (you should see two of them). Restart and Windows should reinstall just the one device, if you have only one NIC in your PC.

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  3. Brian Tillman 24,860 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2020-05-16T02:32:44+00:00

    In reality, the name of the Ethernet adapter device is inconsequential. Clearly there's another structure in the registry with the "Ethernet" name, but it doesn't affect the operation of the computer. As a matter of fact, I see the same thing and have for years. It's never been an issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-05-16T02:43:51+00:00

    In reality, the name of the Ethernet adapter device is inconsequential.

    Yeah, but it just bugs me. Sometimes Windows will point out that there’s no Ethernet connection and it’s like “Ethernet 2: not connected” and the 2 just bugs me because there’s no “1”. I think also because this is a fresh install of Windows and it’s never happened to me before I’m kind of curious as to why it’s happening.

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