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After I installed Wireshark on Windows, my Ethernet shows up as an "unidentified network"

asked 2021-01-18 21:47:27 +0000

Eleos5 gravatar image

updated 2021-01-18 23:00:05 +0000

Guy Harris gravatar image

I downloaded wireshark a little while ago and after I did that, my ethernet was an "unidentified network" and there was no traffic. The only way to get access to the internet was to restart my computer, and that's worked consistently. It's become really annoying to continually do. Sleep mode has the same problem as well. Windows is up to date. Does this possibly have something to do with drivers? How do I fix it?

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I created an account just to answer this. To stop the "unidentified network" problem without uninstalling wireshark you need to go to ethernet properties and unselect Npcap Packet Driver and Npcap Packet Driver (Wi-Fi). It's worth noting that when you do this wireshark won't be able to read your ethernet connection; however, once you re-select the Npcap Packet Driver and Npcap Packet Driver (Wi-Fi) boxes it should work and not cause the "unidentified network" problem unless you restart or shutdown your computer with the boxes still selected (make sure to unselect them when restarting or shutting down).

  1. Go to Network and Sharing Center in the control panel.
  2. Click "Change adapter settings."
  3. Right click Ethernet.
  4. Click Properties.
  5. Under "This connection uses the following items" uncheck the Npcap Packet Driver and Npcap Packet Driver (Wi-Fi) boxes.
  6. Click OK.
sage_of_dreams gravatar imagesage_of_dreams ( 2021-06-03 05:24:02 +0000 )edit

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answered 2021-01-18 22:58:57 +0000

Guy Harris gravatar image

Does this possibly have something to do with drivers?

Probably.

When you installed Wireshark (presumably after downloading it, you installed it :-)), you were asked if you wanted to install Npcap (or, for older versions, WinPcap). That's required in order to do packet capture with Wireshark (rather than just being able to read capture files captured on another machine), and it installs a driver because Windows doesn't provide a "native" packet capture mechanism the way UN*Xes do.

That driver is inserted into the networking stack, and might cause this issue.

Go to the Help menu in Wireshark, and select "About". The display should have a section beginning with "Running with...". That section should mention either WinPcap or Npcap, and give a version number.

If it's Npcap, then:

  1. you should report this as an issue on the Npcap issues list;
  2. if you uninstall Npcap (using the standard Windows UI; where this is depends on whether this is Windows 10 or not), that might fix the problem - you may have to reboot first. That will mean that Wireshark won't be able to capture network traffic, but that may be the price you have to pay.
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That fixed it, thank you very much!

Eleos5 gravatar imageEleos5 ( 2021-01-19 03:31:42 +0000 )edit

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Asked: 2021-01-18 21:47:27 +0000

Seen: 4,637 times

Last updated: Jan 18 '21