This is my first blog post in a while, but I *had* to write something, when I finally managed to solve an issue I’ve been having.

I use a tool called BGInfo, which provides basic information on a computer as part of the wallpaper. Such as below:

Recently I’d installed a NIC into the machine, only to find it was the wrong one. I removed the NIC, yet the history of the network card remained.

This was annoying, because I was getting statistics on something that wasn’t there.

To solve my problem, I had to use a tool called Devcon to remove hardware that no longer exits.

Initially, I downloaded Devcon from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272/

With instructions from https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/da6f6847-5e1a-4b73-9f33-98e8cbddf451/ghosthidden-network-interfaces

I was able to identify the device I wanted to remove.

After running the command:

c:\devcon\i386>devcon -r  remove “@PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8139&SUBSYS_813910EC&REV_10\4&B244743&0&08F0”
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8139&SUBSYS_813910EC&REV_10\4&B244743&0&08F0: Remove failed
No devices were removed.

Turns out, the reason I can’t remove is due to Devcon from that download not being from Windows 7, or for x64 bit OS.

I’m running Windows 7 x64, and the only way to get this file, is to download the WDK which is 600MB. This is ridiculous, since Devcon is only 100kb.

So, after some googling, I came across the x64 version here:

https://mattwv.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/devcon-exe-disable-failed-on-windows-7-x64/

This links to: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rre9l69jjy4vdyr/devcon.zip

So thanks to that guy, I was able to:

c:\devcon\x64>devcon -r  remove “@PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8139&SUBSYS_813910EC&REV_10\4&B244743&0&08F0”
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8139&SUBSYS_813910EC&REV_10\4&B244743&0&08F0: Removed
1 device(s) removed.’

 

Woo!