Graceful way to remove old network drivers in WindowsXP?

[subflava]

Hi guys, here's the situation:

I was using a Linksys NIC in my home computer running Windows XP SP1 which I just upgraded. As a result of the upgrade, I removed the Linksys NIC and just used the on-board NIC of the new motherboard. (Details of upgrade - old motherboard was VIA KT266A based with a discrete Linksys NIC which I upgraded to an Nforce2 with an on-board NIC)

After I swapped out the hardware, installed new drivers, and booted windows for the first time, I went to my TCP/IP settings to try re-enter my old IP settings into the new NIC. After I clicked "OK", XP warned me with a pop-up window saying something to the effect of "...the address entered conflicts with the IP on the Linksys NIC...if you choose to continue your network interface may not function properly, blah, blah..." Apparently XP (Maybe 2000 also?) retains the old NIC settings even after it's been removed from the system.

This would be all fine and good, except for the fact that there seems to be no easy way to remove the drivers and settings for the old card! The old card doesn't show up in the device manager (even with the "show hidden devices" checked). I can see where this feature would be helpful on a notebook that might switch PCMCIA-type network cards frequently...but I don't see how this is useful on a desktop machine. I was able to remove reference to the old drivers by manually editing the registry, but I was wondering if there is a more "correct" way to do this?

I searched MS support and google, but couldn't find anything matching my issue.

 

[subflava]

Hmm....checked the other forums and found one other person with the same problem. He says when he check, "Show hidden devices" in the device manager he was able to remove it that way. Guess that's how it was "supposed" to be done, but got screwed up in my case.