PowerShell Disable-NetAdapter

PowerShell v 3.0 Disable Network Adapter

PowerShell version 3 makes it easier than ever to control your NIC (Network Interface Card) with Enable and Disable-NetAdapter cmdlets.

Tutorial for Disable-NetAdapter

• Scenarios for PowerShell’s Disable-NetAdapter
• How to Disable One of Your Network Cards
• Enable Your Disabled Network Card
• Troubleshooting Disable-NetAdapter
• Research The NetAdapter Cmdlet Family

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Scenarios for PowerShell’s Disable-NetAdapter

There are scenarios where you would need to disable a network adapter, for example controlling Wi-Fi usage.  On the other hand, there are situations where your computer has multiple NICs and you want to choose which one is active.

Windows PowerShell v 3.0 offers an easier, more versatile alternative to grappling with ‘Netsh’ at the command line: Netsh interface set interface <NIC Name> Disabled

The only problem with PowerShell’s Disable-NetAdapter is that you need to know the Name of your NIC.  This is where the sister cmdlet Get-NetAdapter is handy.

Discover the Names of Your NICs

Note 1:  You can research more properties by appending | Get-Member.

How to Disable One of Your Network Cards

Preliminary step: before you launch PowerShell, right-click and ‘Run as Administrator’.

Note 2:  Most likely you need to change the name ‘Wi-Fi’ for the name of your network card revealed by the Discover script above.

Note 3:  You can omit the -Name parameter as PowerShell v 3.0 assumes that the word after NetAdapter is indeed the name of the NIC.

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Enable Your Disabled Network Card

For testing purposes you may wish to ‘Enable’ the network card, and thus reverse the effect of Disable-NetAdapter.

Note 4:  Remember this: before you launch PowerShell 3.0 ISE, right-click and Run as Administrator.

Research Microsoft’s NetAdapter Cmdlet Family

Troubleshooting Disable-NetAdapter

If you don’t have the cmdlet / function called Disable-NetAdapter, then firstly, check that your version of PowerShell is v 3.0.  It also seems that this cmdlet is only available in Windows 8 and Server 2012. 

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This freeware monitor is great for checking whether your network’s load-balancing is performing as expected, for example, are two interfaces are getting about equal traffic?

It’s easy to install and straightforward to configure. You will soon be running tests to see how much network bandwidth your applications consume.

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Getting Started With PowerShell v 3.0

• Launch PowerShell (Preferably the ISE version)
• Copy the lines of code in the above examples (into memory).
• Right-click in the top pane.
• Paste.

More PowerShell v 3.0 Networking Cmdlets

One way to discover more about the new version 3 cmdlets is look at the ‘Modules’ in the Commands pane,  once the ISE has launched.

See more examples of PowerShell v 3.0 NetAdapter cmdlets »

Summary of PowerShell Disable-NetAdapter Cmdlet

PowerShell version 3 brings hundreds of new cmdlets.  If you research the NetAdapter noun then you will see a family of Get, Enable and Disable-NetAdapter cmdlets.

See more Microsoft PowerShell v 3.0 examples

• PowerShell 3.0  • What’s New in PowerShell 3.0  • PowerShell v 3.0 ISE  • PowerShell Home

• Get-NetAdapter  • Disable-NetAdapter  • Enable-NetAdapter  • Get-NetIPConfiguration

• PowerShell Network Cmdlets  • PowerShell 3.0 Logon Script  • PowerShell Show-Command