Realtek NIC #2 ??

[Mike_W]

I originally asked about this problem in another forum. My comp came with the Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC. Just out of boredom and curiosity, I bought and installed an SMC 1244tx NIC.
I went into BIOS and disabled the onboard LAN chip, uninstalled the Realtek through Device Manager and then installed the SMC.
When I rebooted, the Realtek still installed, so did the SMC, but the SMC also installed Realtek drivers. So, I then had two Realtek NICs. After locating and attempting to update the driver for the SMC to the latest driver, which never happened, it would not update, I just disabled the original Realtek NIC and used the SMC as it installed. It worked fine, but I was irritated that the other Realtek (the original) would never go away and showed up as a "Disabled" device and placed the extra Network icon in my sys tray with a red X on it.
I uninstalled the SMC and re-installed the Realtek lan header, enabled the onboard LAN chip in BIOS, and after rebooting, the Realtek shows up as "Realtek 8139/810x Fast Ethernet NIC #2".
I have checked everything I know to check and then some. I cannot locate another instance of a Realtek that would cause this one to be #2. I have been into Device Manager and clicked the "View Hidden Devices" option. It does not show up there. This only occurs in WinXP...Win98se does not show the #2.
Is there a problem?

[burple]

I don't think so. If you do not have another one showing up in safe mode I wouldn't worry, if it works ok. I have the same nic on two of my computers, and the same thing happened to me. It happened on XP Pro and Win 2K pro. I haven't experienced the problem in 98se yet. I called support, and they said that even if I unistall it, in some cases it will keep a counter everytime you install it. I have found no way around it until I reload my os again. I was up to nic #4 at one point, with no issues. I have never seen any adverse affect.

[downhill]

I had a similar problem with a 3 com that quit on me.

What I did was to uninstall in in safe mode, reboot without a nic and uninstall it in safe mode once again since it kept showing up. After the second uninstall in safe mode and a reboot....and checking to see if it was really gone, I shut down, installed the new nic and rebooted....I only show one nic, now.