[Gregor1234]

Background:
I am having difficulties connecting Win 2000 laptops to my home wireless network. All of those problems may be the subject of a different post at a later date but for now, I have been swapping different PCMCIA network cards in and out of the laptops to see if any of the individual cards is causing problems.

The subject of this post:

How, in Win 2000, can I view all Local Area Connections -even those that are not currently in use, and delete the old, unused ones?

What I am finding during this card-swapping exercise is that if I uninstall a PCMCIA card and install a new one, the Win2000 system appears to store away the old, unused "Local Area Connection" associated with the previous PCMCIA card in some hidden location.

If I install a new card the new connection is named "Local Area Connection N" where N is a number that is incremented each time. If I install a new card with the same IP address as a previous connection, I get a warning that another (unused) connection has the same address configured and might conflict if re-connected.

How do I view all of these defunct Local Area Connections and delete the defunct ones?

There was a clue that they might be stored in my hardware profile but I could not find them in the device manager even with the Show Hidden Entries turned on. I may not have been looking in the right place.

[Re IP address:I once had a laptop that simply wouldn't use DHCP correctly and I haven't used it since. I also enjoy being able to use a IP address filter on the router for added security.]

[1_rob_1]

Have you looked in start\settings\control panel\network & dial up connections. & tried to delete them there?

[TerryNet]

Whether or not you find a way to "delete" the connections associated with the other adapters, I think that the way to avoid the conflicting IP messages is to restart your router.

Dhcp seems to work pretty good these days in most cases.

The IP address filter is not going to stop somebody who really wants to access your system; he/she will simply determine what IP is valid and use that. WPA encryption is secure; WEP will stop most people

[Gregor1234]

(A) To 1_rob_1: The thing is that I can't see these unused connections in start\settings\control panel\network & dial up connections but I can tell that they are hidden somewhere.

Let's say I install adapter A and give it IP address XYZ.
It comes up in "...\network & dial up connections" as "Local Area Connection 1"

Later I "uninstall adapter A and remove all of its components" (as the install shield usually says). Then I install adaptor B and give it the same IP address XYZ.

The system warns me that the ip address XYZ is in use in another profile and may conflict with the current setting if the other profile is reactivated AND it comes up in "...\network & dial up connections" as "Local Area Connection 2" even though there is no "Local Area Connection 1" showing any longer.

Apparently "Local Area Connection 1" is hidden away somewhere that I can't get to it. I would like to delete it but I can't find it. There are hints that the unused connection profile is maintained somewhere in the hardware profile but I can't find it.

(B) To TerryNet: Agreed, the IP filter is only a stumbling block for a determined intruder. I use MAC filtering and WEP as well.

[1_rob_1]

After removing the ip address,
Go to start\run type cmd here you can clear out the ARP cache and reload it. This can be done by using the Arp tool. Use commands arp -a or arp -g to display the cache contents. Delete the entries with arp -d <IP address>.
Now try to setup the ip address you want to use

[Gregor1234]

Thanks for the tip 1_rob_1.
I will try this soon.

[StumpedTechy]

I just do a registry search for Local Area Connection and delete all Connection keys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\*\*\Connection (where * is a long key that is unique per PC).

Upon reboot it places the new card as Local Area Connection.

This also works well if you have a machine that you want to get a specific adapter to be Local Area connection and a secondary you want as Local Area Connection 2. I.E. I'll disable a Wireless network adapter and this way all LAN adapters in our office are Local Area Connection and all wireless adapters are Local Area Connection 2 because I renable after the reboot for it to pop up as Local Area Connection 2.