Disable Network Adapter in Windows 10

How to Disable a Network Adapter in Windows 10

In Windows 10, the modern Settings app still doesn’t allow to quickly disable a network adapter. Here are the alternative ways to disable a network adapter in the OS.

With Windows 10, Microsoft has moved most of the network options to Settings. Setting and the new Network pop-up which appears when you click on the network icon in the system tray look completely different from what we had in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. As of now, the modern Settings UI doesn’t come with an option to disable a network adapter quickly. Instead, we can use a number of classic tools & utilities.

Windows 10 shows a list of available Wi-Fi networks with a special network pane. It also shows the network that you are currently connected to. Using that Network pane, you can open Network & internet settings or enable or disable Wi-Fi, Mobile Hotspot and Airplane mode. But not the network adapter!

To disable a network adapter, you can use either

• the classic Network Connections folder,
• Device Manager,
• Netsh,
• or PowerShell.

To disable a network adapter in Windows 10,

1. Open the classic Network Connections folder (Press Win +R, type shell:::{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}, press Enter. See this post).
2. Right-click the network connection for the adapter you want to disable.
3. Select Disable from the context menu.
4. The network adapter will be disabled along with the network connection.

The same way, you can enable the disabled connection by right-clicking it and selecting “Enable” in the context menu.

Disable a Network Adapter with Device Manager

1. Press the Win + X  keyboard shortcut and click/tap on Device Manager.
2. In the device tree, find your device.
3. Right-click on the network adapter and select “Disable device” from the context menu.
4. The network adapter will be disabled.

To re-enable the disabled network adapter, right-click on it in Device Manager, select “Enable device” from the context menu.

Disable a Network Adapter using Netsh

Netsh is a console utility which allows you to customize a lot of network options.  Here is how you can use it to disable a network adapter.

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator.
2. Type the following command: netsh interface show interface. Make note of the Interface Name value for the network adapter you want to disable.
3. Type the following command to disable the network adapter netsh interface set interface "Ethernet 2" disable. Substitute the Ethernet 2 potion with the name of the network interface you want to disable.
4. The network adapter related to that network interface will be disabled.
5. The undo command: netsh interface set interface "Interface Name" enable.

Disable a Network Adapter with PowerShell

PowerShell is an advanced form of command prompt. It is extended with a set of cmdlets and allows using .NET framework/C# in scripts.

To disable a Network Adapter with PowerShell,

1. Open a PowerShell console as Administrator.
2. To see available network adapters, run the command Get-NetAdapter | format-list.
3. Make note of the network adapter name.
4. To disable the adapter, run the command Disable-NetAdapter -Name "your network adapter name" -Confirm:$false. Substite “your network adapter name” portion with the actual network adapter name from the step 2.
5. The undo command is Enable-NetAdapter -Name "your network adapter name" -Confirm:$false.

That’s all about disabling network adapters in Windows 10.

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