Q. I have some network loopback adapters installed on my system. How do I get rid of them?

A. I recently had some software that installed two additional network adapters that were actually instances of the Microsoft loopback adapter. This adapter that doesn't link to any physical hardware—it's just used for internal communications in an OS instance. I couldn't delete them using the Network Connections Control Panel applet.

Instead, launch device manager (devmgmt.msc) and expand Network adapters. You'll see the loopback adapter instances, and from device manager you can uninstall them. Use the Uninstall context menu option, as shown, and click OK. This same method will work for any piece of hardware, and I've used it to uninstall a piece of hardware and then reinstall it.