TechTips - How to Fix the Error "The IP Address You Have Entered for This Network Adapter is Already Assigned to Another Adapter Which is No Longer Present in This Computer"

I have a huge problem that is giving me errors with my virtual machines. The problem happens when Windows Server 2008 Hyper-v guests don't delete the original IP address after I run SysPrep on them. This can cause so many problems when you have as many VMs and servers as I do. SysPrep is built to remove this kind of information, but for some reason it hasn't been happening with my Server 2008 images. SysPrep is built with what is called "generalization" which means the removal of machine information when its run. When you work through the steps of SysPrep there is a box that you check called Generalize, which I checked so that this info would be removed when SysPrep ran.

You can get several different errors when SysPrep runs and the IP isn't removed from the new image when it loads. You can get this common error:

"The IP address you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter which is no longer present in this computer"

This problem isn't specific just to SysPrep with Hyper-v guests, it can happen for a number of reasons. I am just giving you the process I went through that led to this error and the two ways I found to fix my issue. So for the first method to fix this issue which most commonly solves the problem see below.

To fix this error you will want to follow these steps:

Click Start

Click Search Bar

Type CMD

Hit Enter

Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Hit enter

Type start devmgmt.msc

Hit Enter (windows device manager will open)

Click View

Click Show Hidden Devices (You should see the problem NIC, Delete it)

Now once you have deleted this problem NIC from device manager you will be able to finish configuring your primary NIC with the proper IP information. Once configured you shouldn't have any more issues with the IP conflicts.

I also have run into a second problem on a machine where a NIC card hangs onto the IP and won't allow you to delete it out of device manager. Even if I go into the NIC and remove the IP info (it looks like it's gone) it still gives you the error and when you look at the NICs properties again the IP info is still there.

To resolve this issue all you have to do is uninstall the NIC card from the Virtual Machine Host server, to do that follows these steps:

Connect to the VM Guest session from the Host server.

Open Device Manager

Open Network adapters

Right click the NIC with the problem

Choose uninstall

Right click Network adapters

Choose Scan for Hardware Changes

Once the NIC reinstalls configure it with the IP info

These were the only two problems I came across with my SysPrep images and they were relatively simple to fix. The second error took me a bit longer to get figured out, I kept trying to change or delete the IP info and finally just removed the NIC. Hopefully if you are running into these types of issue one of these two fixes helps you out.