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This is pertaining to Windows in general (XP and all recent versions)

After replacing an old motherboard with a new one, the NIC is different, has a new MAC address and generally needs a new TCP/IP configuration. However the old NIC is still somewhere there with its designated IP address and the rest.

Question: is it possible to retrieve those settings (most important is the static IP address) for an old network card that is no longer present in the system?

mwfearnley
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Konrad Gajewski
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    Why is this question getting downvoted??? – Konrad Gajewski Jan 10 '16 at 18:28
  • In most cases I would expect IPs to be documented in some sort of IPAM tool (if only a spreadsheet) and for the other settings (DNS, GW...) to be documented and standardized across the machines in the same network domain, so it is hard to understand in what context you would need to go digging in the bowels of the OS to retrieve this info. Could you explain ? – Jeremy Gibbons Jan 11 '16 at 04:58
  • @JeremyGibbons You seem to have a very naive outlook on the realities of IT. Oh, yes... we all know the way things should be. But you are not always handed that. – Konrad Gajewski Jan 12 '16 at 05:17
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    Thanks for posting this question. I found this difficult to Google for, and this was the most helpful result I found. – mwfearnley Nov 27 '17 at 14:08
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    Glad this question was asked as it's now floating to the top of the Google results. Upvoted. – Shrout1 Feb 11 '19 at 10:35
  • As a non Windows user, my search for finding old network adapter configs lead me to this post, I'm glad to have found the question asked and a good answer posted. Weird that this was downvoted so much. Perhaps more experienced Windows users have more specific search terms, but I find simple questions like these get overlooked a lot by "proficient" users as if to turn up their noses. Besides, I'd rather see a question even as simple as this asked 50 different ways than in one specific way... – Tmanok Jun 12 '21 at 11:09
  • @JeremyGibbons For me, I had two choices: either boot a VM on a different hypervisor that was stale and could back-date data, or figure out on the newly migrated VM what the previous network configuration was. This specific question helped me because after migrating hypervisors, the VM recognized its network adapter as being different and the old network configuration was no longer available through Control Panel. – Tmanok Jun 12 '21 at 11:12

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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces]

That registry address contains a list of GUIDs for all the interfaces. Inside those are the connection settings and other information. Not sure if the old card would be in the current config but you could always look at a backup or other older copy to see if you can get the address from there.

Nick Young
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  • Thank you for your answer; this was #3 on Google and it's useful for retrieving static IP info off of non-booting windows installs. Grab the old static IP and do a wipe. – Shrout1 Feb 11 '19 at 10:37