Command to disable/enable a network interface

[John Gray]

For some reason one of our servers won't set its manually-defined IP address after a reboot (PING <servername> just times out), and it is necessary to disable and enable one of the network interfaces to return things to normal.

In the short term, until the matter can be looked into more deeply, I'd like to schedule a quick BATch job to perform this function at startup time.

Has anyone used commands like
netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" DISABLED
netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" ENABLED
and did they find them successful?

Is there a better way?

[HansV]

Those netsh commands supposedly work on Windows Server 2003 but not on XP.

You might try devcon (see Re: DOS command-line to eject a USB drive); you can get the device id that you need from Device Manager.

[John Gray]

Thanks, Hans - I already tried DevCon on my XP Pro PC:

DevCon disable "Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection"

and it just says No Devices Disabled - so I think I must be choosing the wrong 'name'...

[HansV]

I think you need to use the hardware ID (without quotes), not the device name.

[HansV]

Here's a screenshot from my PC - it's in Dutch but you'll get the idea (or ID ):

x310.png

The hardware ID is the common part before the &, so to disable the network connection, I should be able to use

devcon.exe disable PCI\VEN_14E4

[John Gray]

Thanks - bizarrely my hardware ID was PCI\VEN_8086!

On my XP Pro box, the Devcon Disable command for PCI\VEN_8086 disabled 9 devices (four failed) and the Enable enabled 13!
If I use the entire hardware string there are problems with the ampersands being interpreted as connecting two 'commands'. Putting double quotes round the whole string causes it to be ignored.

Think I'm going to work with NETSH on the server...

[HansV]

That sounds like a safer (and easier) solution...