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How to find MAC address of 'invisible' hardware?

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barney:
Windows - Win7 RC - is reporting an IP conflict, i.e., , two network elements with the same IP address.  When I check the Event viewer, the MAC address of the conflicting element is reported.  But I can't find anything with that address.

Anyone know of a utility that can find the inactive element?  Or, perhaps, where I'd look - registry? - to isolate the element, change its IP address?

Y'know ... once upon a time, I thought I was pretty good at this stuff <sigh /> ....

4wd:
If you have a DHCP server on your network, (router, etc), change your hardware to automatically get an IP and then use SoftPerfect's NetScan to scan the network and set it to show the MAC associated with IP's.

If you don't have a DHCP server in the network, start unplugging one thing at a time until the conflict disappears, (or perform a binary chop searchw which would be faster - unplug half of the remaining hardware at a time until it goes).  Of course, the easiest place to do this is at the router/hub where they all come together.   In fact this would be faster than doing the auto-IP thing.

You haven't mentioned exactly how big this network is, whether it's got a router (in which case you can usually go into it's config pages and see what IP is associated with which MAC), etc, etc.

Shades:
Go to a dos box (Start - Run - 'cmd'), in that box type the following: 'ipconfig /all'
This command will show you an extensive overview of the configuration from every NIC in your local PC. Check if the culprit MAC address is there. Repeat this for every PC in the network.

This is exactly the reason why DHCP servers were invented.

Ah, 4wd was faster.

4wd:
Ah, 4wd was faster.-Shades (June 12, 2009, 07:50 PM)
--- End quote ---

Only because where I live I'm quite a few hours ahead of you :P

Doesn't work with f0dder usually because he lives in a different plane of existence where there is no time.

barney:
Have a LinkSys WRT350N router, but it doesn't tell me anything that I can't already see.

Basic connections are as follows:

* LinkSys WUSB300 wireless @ 192.168.1.100 - primary machine
* Intel Pro/100 NIC @ 192.168.1.105 - primary machine
* generic 10 Mb NIC @ 192.168.1.106 - backup machineThere are other wireless units connected via DHCP, up to five at any give time, but none currently connected.  The error pops up with or without other wireless units connected.

There is also an NAS drive at IP 192.168.1.10.

The error is always on IP 192.168.1.100.  However, when I run LanGuard, it fails to show that IP address as a system.  Ran the SoftPerfect scanner, and it, too, fails to show the IP address as a system.

However, the SoftPerfect app did show that IP as having the conflicting MAC address.  But, ipconfig in a DOS box - pardon, command prompt - shows the IP address as 192.168.1.100(Duplicate), but with a totally different MAC address than the network scanners show.

Both scanners recognize the IP as active, but neither reports any details from a normal scan.  Had to do a right-click on the IP in SoftPerfect to get it to tell me the MAC address.

Dont have this problem with WinXP, nor with last three flavours of Ubuntu (as well as a couple of other distros), just with Win7.

If I disable the NIC, I lose the NAS drive (don't know why), so that's not a viable option.  I simply cannot find the cause of the Win7 error message.  It doesn't seem to be causing any problems that I can recognize:  I just don't like errant error messages.

The problem seems to be that Win7 sees a MAC that simply does not physically exist.

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