How to regain the network connection after accidentally disabling the network adapter on an Windows Azure Virtual Machine?

What happens when you disable an Ethernet Network adapter in Windows Azure Virtual Machine?

How do you enable a Ethernet Network Adapter in Windows Azure Virtual Machine in case you have disabled it?

Is it possible to access the same virtual machine without deleting and re-creating the one from scratch in case you have disabled the one an only Ethernet network adapter

You cannot connect to Microsoft Azure Windows Virtual Machine (VM) after you disable the default Network Interface (NIC) or manually sets a static IP for the NIC. This post shows how to reset the network interface for Azure Windows VM, which helped me regain the network connection after accidentally disabling the network adapter on an Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Reset network interface

For Classic VMs

To reset network interface, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Azure portal.
2. Select Virtual Machines (Classic).
3. Select the affected Virtual Machine.
4. Select IP addresses.
5. If the Private IP assignment is not Static, change it to Static.
6. Change the IP address to another IP address that is available in the Subnet.
7. Select Save.
8. The virtual machine will restart to initialize the new NIC to the system.
9. Try to RDP to your machine. If successful, you can change the Private IP address back to the original if you would like. Otherwise, you can keep it.

For VMs deployed in Resource group model

1. Go to the Azure portal.
2. Select the affected Virtual Machine.
3. Select Network Interfaces.
4. Select the Network Interface associated with your machine
5. Select IP configurations.
6. Select the IP.
7. If the Private IP assignment is not Static, change it to Static.
8. Change the IP address to another IP address that is available in the Subnet.
9. The virtual machine will restart to initialize the new NIC to the system.
10. Try to RDP to your machine. If successful, you can change the Private IP address back to the original if you would like. Otherwise, you can keep it.

Delete the unavailable NICs

After you can remote desktop to the machine, you must delete the old NICs to avoid the potential problem:

1. Open Device Manager.
2. Select View > Show hidden devices.
3. Select Network Adapters.
4. Check for the adapters named as "Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter".

5. You might see an unavailable adapter that is grayed out (see figure blow). Right-click the adapter and then select Uninstall.

   Note

   Only uninstall the unavailable adapters that have the name "Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter". If you uninstall any of the other hidden adapters, it could cause additional issues.

6. Now all unavailable adapter should be cleared out from your system.