If you are using VMware Enterprise Converter to do Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) machine conversions you will probably run into this issue at some point. When you boot a recently converted machine and attempt to modify the TCP/IP settings on the new VMware NIC you may receive an error stating that there is an existing NIC with the same IP settings.

Basically this is the ghost of NIC’s past. You need to reveal the hidden NIC and remove it. While this is not absolutly required it is most certainly recommended. Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Open up a command prompt

Step 2: Type - “SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1″ and hit <Enter>

Step 3: Type - “START DEVMGMT.MSC” and hit <Enter>

Step 4: Once the Device Manger opens to the “View” menu and select “Show Hidden Devices”. Expand the Network Interface portion of the device tree and you should be able to remove the phantom NIC.

This should also give you a chance to remove any other non-existent hardware that is left over from the physical server.