Get-NetAdapter returns a bunch of adapters (about 15) which are not visible anywhere else in the system. Looks like this:

HP hs3210 HSPA  Mobile Broadband Device      37 Not Present

What are these, and how to remove them ?

CodePudding user response：

Net adapaters are physical or virtual network devices in your system (not WIFi devices in you area as suggested by @jdweng). Unless you know what your doing, or have a clear goal in mind i would just leave the devices as they are or you risk breaking Windows.

Items returned by get-NetAdapter were detected/installed at some point. Things like HyperV, VMWare, Docker, VPN's etc as well as physical hardware like network cards, or bluetooth can all install devices like this. If you have physically removed or disabled a device in the BIOS of your PC you will still see traces of them - but honestly theres little advantage to removing them, but there is a risk of seriously breaking your Windows installation in weird ways (you have been warned :-).

If you really want to peruse deleting these devices take a look in the registry - HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet and its subkeys - this is ultimately where those devices are stored. Again, deleting stuff from the registry can have unintended as well as catastrophic consequences. (so backup your data, have a boot USB to hand etc before you start). good luck!

CodePudding user response：

If they are genuinely physical devices that have been removed, there are several powershell scripts available that will remove "ghost" devices on your system that were once installed but now no longer have associated hardware. Just Google "powershell remove ghost devices".

I've adapted this one for use in my particular environment:

https://github.com/istvans/scripts/blob/master/removeGhosts.ps1

Take care, understand what the script is doing and test thoroughly. Only remove what is definitely not required.