Windows 2008 NIC Disappeared

[esnmb]

Anyone ever see a NIC disappear from a VM?  We had a reboot a 2008 64bit server and when it came back up the VMXNET 2 Enhanced was gone.

I removed it and added the VMXNET3 and after putting the ip information back in it did complain the old addresses was on a missing adapter and I had Windows remove the old info.

Very strange, and not at all the best thing to happen.  Thankfully this is a dev server so no issue..

Thanks.

[NvR4GeT]

I have experienced this myself. I had it happen to multiple servers that were in production. One primpary was a Terminal Server. Didn't find this out until someone was trying to connect via IP Address. It seemed it took a DHCP Lease. I didn't investigate too much as I just needed it up and running in production. I believe there are still remnants left in the Registry on the VM showing the NIC still being present somehow. I know I've seen some sort of article with which registry to edit.

One KB Article that talks about it:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1020718

Another interesting Article: Didn't look this far to see anything but may be of interest. This supposively stops it from disappearing.

http://www.vmwareinfo.com/2009/11/vsphere-disable-device-hot-plug-on.html

This next article explains a registry in windows to look at:

http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2010/06/nic-is-missing-in-my-virtual-machine.html#.UWWp1JOG1u8

[esnmb]

I saw the article explaining that it migh have happened if someone ejected it. I saw another article talking about a line in the vmware*.log that can point to it as well, "VMX has left the building".  I do see this in the log file now so perhaps they ejected it...?

[NvR4GeT]

I see they claim it is a user action to remove the NIC. I don't see how mine would have occurred as I'm the only one managing the environment. So, that makes me more concerned of what could be happening. But, if you have multiple users in your environment managing your VMs or logging into vSphere they possibly are the culprit and your better off making the adjustments to the NIC to disable it being a Hot Plug. And then making modifications to the registry to not allow it to be removed within the OS.

[Ethan44]

Hi

Welcome to the communities.

In my case it was due to hot fix ,I did not remember exact hot fix number but once i rollback it start working .

"a journey of a thousand miles starts  with a single step."

[NvR4GeT]

I just did a test on a DEV server with ejecting the VMNIC from the USB Removal feature in the OS. It removes the nic entirely and i feel as if it acts different than the situation you have experienced or myself. I may agree of a possible hotfix. Hopefully we can find it. I'm working with ESXi 5.1 with vSphere 5.1

FYI I received the same message when I input the new IP Information. But the big difference was in vSphere Client it advised me there was no network card assigned to the VM. I did not experience this previously. Unless it auto assigns a network card to the VM after so long, which I don't think happens.

[esnmb]

I'm running 5.0 Update 2 currently.  I to doubt that it was a user action since it was working fine, a user rebooted, then no nic...  I'd love to find this hotfix as well.  I'll keep digging.