When doing a Physical-to-Virtual (P2v) or a Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migration of a Windows-based Operating System to either a VMware or Hyper-V based host you may find that some hardware devices are left installed in the virtual machine after the process completes, this is particularly true for Network Adapters. Following documentation and best practices by normally removing integration tools and device drivers before attempting a migration would minimise the chance of this situation arising, although if for some reason this step is forgotten or doesn’t deliver expected results once the new VM boots up, you may need to remove the devices in question – but how?
This quick set of steps has proven useful when I have had to deal with this issue. I would also suggest making a small batch script to save time in future uses, just remember to run it with Administrator privileges. In this example I refer to removing a network adapter, but you can safely uninstall any device that has been hidden or physically removed from a Windows system.
- Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
- Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, and then press ENTER.
- Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.
- Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.
- Expand the Network Adapters tree.
- Right-click the dimmed network adapter, and then click Uninstall.
For further reference to this procedure read: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269155