Why does "#2" appear after my network adapter in device manager

[mokjw]

When I moved my PCI cards around, firstly, the "Local Area Connection"
item got renamed to "Local Area Connection 2". I also noticed that in
the device manager, there is a "#2" after the network adapter name.

Why does this happen? Does this mean that the previous installation of
the driver is still active and therefore taking up resources?

 

[Jetro]

You can rename Local Area Connection and delete phantom devices according to
MS KB article 241257 - Device Manager Does Not Display Devices Not Currently
Present in Windows 2000.

The system BIOS initiates the PnP BIOS. The PnP BIOS scans the PCI bus for
hardware. The PCI card responds by identifying itself. The device ID is sent
back across the bus to the BIOS. The PnP BIOS checks the ESCD to see if the
configuration data for the card is already present and unchanged. The PnP
BIOS assigns IRQ, DMA, memory address and I/O settings to the PCI card and
saves the data in the ESCD if any information was updated. Windows PnP
manager enumerates the bus alike - detects the devices, assign IDs and loads
the drivers. If the same device changes its slot the BIOS assigns different
set of resources to it and the device is treated as the different one.

Non-present devices aren't deleted from the registry. Any object with the
same human-friendly name should be distinguished somehow and accepts numbers
in Windows.