Excess Network Adapters buildup in Device Manager

[Daze N. Knights]

I have one Intel Gigabit network adapter, but in addition to this one
legitimate network adapter, I find an additional five listings under
"Network Adapters" in my Device Manager, all of which have exclamation
points. The first one that showed up was "isatap.sbcglobal.net." Then,
two more of these listings showed up after I installed VMWare Player:
"VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1" and "VMWare Virtual
Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8," both of which remained (but with
exclamation points) after uninstalling the VMWare Player. Plus, after
uninstalling the VMWare Player, two more of these listings with
exclamation points showed up:
"isatap.{55294CA4-8EF2-4584-9DA6-D8F459AD5A73}" and
isatap.{8BAFA4E5-BE3D-4C0F-8B87-39F69A39B93A}."

The full list looks like this:

Network Adapters
Intel(R)82566DC Gigabit Network Connection
! isatap.{55294CA4-8EF2-4584-9DA6-D8F459AD5A73}
! isatap.{8BAFA4E5-BE3D-4C0F-8B87-39F69A39B93A}
! isatap.sbcglobal.net
! VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1
! VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8

What in the world does one do about these weird listings? They can't be
uninstalled. Can they be removed via the registry?

 

[Lang Murphy]

I have one Intel Gigabit network adapter, but in addition to this one
legitimate network adapter, I find an additional five listings under
"Network Adapters" in my Device Manager, all of which have exclamation
points. The first one that showed up was "isatap.sbcglobal.net." Then, two
more of these listings showed up after I installed VMWare Player: "VMWare
Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1" and "VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter
for VMnet8," both of which remained (but with exclamation points) after
uninstalling the VMWare Player. Plus, after uninstalling the VMWare Player,
two more of these listings with exclamation points showed up:
"isatap.{55294CA4-8EF2-4584-9DA6-D8F459AD5A73}" and
isatap.{8BAFA4E5-BE3D-4C0F-8B87-39F69A39B93A}."

The full list looks like this:

Network Adapters
Intel(R)82566DC Gigabit Network Connection
! isatap.{55294CA4-8EF2-4584-9DA6-D8F459AD5A73}
! isatap.{8BAFA4E5-BE3D-4C0F-8B87-39F69A39B93A}
! isatap.sbcglobal.net
! VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1
! VMWare Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8

What in the world does one do about these weird listings? They can't be
uninstalled. Can they be removed via the registry?

Have you tried running compmgmt.msc as administrator? It's in
\windows\system32... right click on it and select Run as Administrator...

Lang

 

[Daze N. Knights]

With no better ideas coming in, I used a week-old Complete PC Backup to
restore my system partition to before installing and uninstalling the
VMWare Player. That got rid of four of my Device Manager's Network
Adapter useless entries with exclamation points, leaving me with only
one: isatap.sbcglobal.net. This one obviously relates somehow to my AT&T
DSL, and I found a Microsoft article on it that essentially just
acknowledges the issue and says to ignore it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932520