Removing Local Area Connection

[Dennis]

I have a Local Area Connection (for the laptop's onboard LAN hardware)
that I can't get rid of. The hardware was damaged years ago during an
electrical storm, so I use the PC's wireless connection now. When I
tried Properties/Configure/Drivers/Uninstall, the operation just hung.
When I finally killed it after 10 minutes, I tried to shutdown the PC,
but that also hung during "Windows is shutting down".

Is there something I can manually try or edit to get rid of this?

 

[Dennis]

It should be possible to turn off the LAN port in the
laptop's BIOS through BIOS setup. Once it is done,
Windows no longer sees it.

Is that F10 when booting? I looked there and under the boot options
there was something about the LAN but it was already 'disabled'.

 

[Dennis]

It depends on the system how you get into the BIOS. What is the make and
moldel ?

It's a Presario. F10 does bring me to the Phoenix BIOS ... and under
System Configuration/Boot Options there is "Internal Network Interface
Card" - disabled. I don't remember disabling this, but it was about 4
years ago I had the lightning strike.

You can also disable the network interface (NIC) in Device Manager.
Uninstalling the drivers is NOT the way to go.

If I disable it in Device Manager, it hangs. Same as Uninstall.

***

Could it be hanging because it is disabled in the BIOS?

 

[Dennis]

F10 does bring me to the Phoenix BIOS ... and under
System Configuration/Boot Options there is "Internal Network Interface
Card" - disabled.

Correction - it says "Internal Network Interface Boot" - disabled. I
believe this is the Wake on LAN setting. Other than that (and the
disable NIC appearing last in the boot sequence), I don't see anything
else in the BIOS regarding the NIC.