Removed network adapter, cannot remove driver/settings

[Guest]

I have a Windows 2000 server that had a network card completely die such that
it was not recognized by the system.

I installed a replacement card of the same type and it was detected as the
'AMD PCNet Adapter #2'. Not a big deal.

Even if viewing 'Hidden devices' in device manager, I cannot remove the
missing network adapter.

I don't mind the warning that another adapter already has the IP address
I put on the new card (same address as on the old card), but I've got another
interesting problem: I'm replacing my primary DNS server very soon.

The problem:
-The new card's TCP/IP properties do NOT refer to the old DNS server in
any fashion.
-According to the retiring DNS server's debug logs, my problem server is
still doing lots of lookups against it - even though it's not showing the
TCP/IP properties for the running card.
-Registry entries still lingering for the removed card DO refer to the
old DNS server. I'm not comfortable just hacking them out of the registry
without some reassurance, though.
-If I stop the DNS Server service on the retiring domain controller, the
problem server does get somewhat angry at not being able to reach the old DNS
server.

Any words of advice?

 

[Guest]

I'm not aware of any utility that will cleanup partially uninstalled network
adapters. I have experienced the problem before and was able to delete the
references to the network adapter in the registry and its TCP/IP settings
will no ill effect. I'm sure you are already aware of where they are, but
here's where you'd want to look

HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip
HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Adapters
HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

I've also found this KB article to help with other places that the network
card may still exist, but it doesn't seem to help as much as it sounds like
it should:

Manually Removing Network Adapter Entries from the Registry
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/147797/EN-US/