uninstalling network adapter problems

I have a Win2000 Pro system running on a cable connection behind a firewall router. I was tinkering with network protocols for sharing a printer with a 98 system. Now I have (I guess) corrupted my nic card drivers. So I decided to uninstall the adapter and reinstall properly. The problem is when I try to uninstall, a Win box comes up and says "uninstall failed the system may not boot without this device ". To make matters worse. I have Mcafee Virusscan 6 that includes Mcaffe Firewall. And now every time I reboot it installs another miniport network adapter driver that I can`t uninstall as well. HELP PLEASE!

 

If you have a router firewall, why mess with the software one as well?

Have you tried disabling McAfee AV, firewall, and all (uninstall it if necessary) and seeing if you can get things fixed then?

And I would suggest you open a DOS window and run chkdsk /r and when it says it can't access stuff, say "yes" to running it at next reboot.

 

You have lots of NICs in the registry, but they're not showing up in device manager, so of course you can't uninstall them. To get them to show up in control panel, so you can remove them all and then reinstall your NIC, use the following procedure. In command prompt window, enter "set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1" (without the quotes, of course) . Then, open control panel and, under View, check Show Hidden Devices. You'll then see a long list of NICs that you can uninstall, one by one. Remove then all, reboot, and then reinstall your NIC.