Use PowerShell to Enable / Disable a NIC

Employ PowerShell to Enable / Disable a NIC

Win32_NetworkAdapter has not only properties, but also ‘dot’ methods such as .disable() and .enable().

Topics for PowerShell Enable / Disable Network Adapters

• Preliminary PowerShell Script  To Check Network Connections
• How To Disable a Network Card with PowerShell
• Filter the Output for ‘Real’ Network Cards
• PowerShell Script To Test Which Network Connections are Active
• How to Enable or Disable NIC in PowerShell 3.0

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Preliminary PowerShell Script  To Check Network Connections

To gain a better understanding of your network card’s properties let us run a preliminary script to enumerate the connections.  In particular we wish to know the values for NetConnectionStatus (2,4, or 7).  We also need the values for DeviceID.

Note 1: The key property is NetEnabled.  In the output we are looking for values of ‘True’.  Also the NetConnectionStatus of active NICs will be 2 and not 7.

Note 2: PowerShell has no word-wrap, thus we use the backtick ` to tell the command to continue on the next line. 

Trap: With the backtick there should be no space after the `.

Note 3: Observe PowerShell’s trademark the (|) pipe symbol, this means that the output of the main command is pumped into Format-Table.  I chose, NetEnabled, NetConnectionStatus, DeviceId from the  dozens of possible Win32_NetworkAdapter properties of to display.

Note 4: Improvement, we could add a -computerName parameter, with a value of a computer on your network.  For example: Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter -computerName BIGSERVER.

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How To Disable a Network Card with PowerShell

Preliminaries – Vital for Success.  Decide which machine you are configuring, this script is set for LocalHost.  Important: Your DeviceId is unlikely to be 17, so please research and amend for your computer.

Note 5: If the script did not work, then change DeviceId =17.  You could also check which machine you wish to disable.  Consider adjusting the value of -ComputerName ???

Note 6: To reverse the script and ENABLE a nic the command is $Nic.enable().

Note 7: Check your results by running the above script.

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Filter the Output for ‘Real’ Network Cards

This example also employs -computerName LocalHost, which you could change to the name, or IP address of a machine on your network.

Note 8: The filtering is achieved through this clause:
-filter "NetConnectionStatus = 2"   Actually, you could a ‘Where’ clause thus:
Where-Object {$_.NetConnectionStatus -eq ‘2’}

Note 9: PowerShell has no word-wrap, thus the backtick ` means continue on the next line.  Beware, there should be no space after the `.

Challenge: Change -computerName LocalHost to the value of a machine on your network.

Next Step:  To discover the IP address try the sister class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration

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How to List More WMI Network Classes

The additional feature of this script is that refines the search from the broad ‘Win32’, to the narrower ‘Win32_Network’.  The result is a list of network WMI classes.

Learning Points

Note 10: In practical terms, most of the 7 network classes are disappointing.  However, the class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration has the useful property of DefaultIPGateway and IpAddress.

See more real-life PowerShell tasks »

Summary of Use PowerShell to Enable / Disable a NIC

The key concept is that you need a .disable() method.  But first you need to get the Win32_NetworkAdapter class.  I have also included a separate script so that you can check the status of the NetConnectionStatus before and after you attempt to enable or disable the NIC.

See More Microsoft PowerShell WMI Examples:

• Home   • PowerShell Get-WmiObject   • Windows PowerShell   • PowerShell 3.0 Network

• Win32_pingstatus   • WMI Win32_NetworkAdapter   • Win32_NetworkAdapterConfig

• Disable NIC   • PowerShell -Filter  • PowerShell -Query   • PowerShell Select   • Free WMI Monitor

Please email me if you have any example scripts. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.