After rebooting virtual machine the guest operating system NIC shows disconnected.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• After rebooting windows guest OS the NIC card shows disconnected
• The network adaptor does show up under network setting in guest OS.
• There was no windows patches applied. 
• The vNIC adaptor  shows connected under virtual machine setting
• Under guest OS , Show hidden devices option in the Device Manager (View > Show hidden devices) does not show the virtual NIC or ghosted adapter

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

Cause

The network connectivity issue was likely caused by a conflict or corruption within the VMXNET3 driver's installation or its interaction with the guest OS's network configuration, possibly corrupted by existing NIC Teaming settings. This underlying inconsistency manifested after the guest OS reboot, preventing the network adapter from correctly initializing.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, refer the following steps.

1. Uninstall VMware Tools from within the guest operating system.
2. Dissolve any existing NIC Teaming configurations within the guest operating system.
3. Reboot the guest operating system
4. Install VMware Tools, ensuring the VMXNET3 driver is properly installed during this process.
   Installing VMware Tools on a VMware vSphere virtual machine running Windows OS
   
   

Additional Information

Networking Error: IP address already assigned to another adapter