This topic is to collect some information, if someone has any, about the WAN miniport #2 virtual device in Windows 8
There are many complaints but so far there has been no resolution to the problem.
Just as a heads up, since it windows doesn't allow you to uninstall it I tried to delete it through registry and lost the ability to see any networks while the hardware itself was recognized and working.
EDIT: The **bleep** thing is out! Had to call excorcist in:P jk..
Anyway, I want kudos for this, now.
Found the solution following this link: http://oyam.ca/blog/2011/11/windows-miniports.html
FIne gentleman who runs it had a tip waiting for us, summary is below:
To do this, DO NOT edit the registries. There are number of other registry keys that depend on the miniports being present, and it is super easy to completely break the network stack, to a point where the base network card driver won’t work. (If you did this already, let’s hope your system has restore points — you can restore to previous snapshot and try doing it the non-registry way outlined there.) When doing this, take a note of the miniports that you are removing, you’ll need to know this later when reinstalling.
So, to remove each non-working miniport, do the following:
Right click on the non-working miniport, choose “Update Driver”.
Choose “Browse my computer”.
In the next window, choose “Let me pick driver from a list”.
Uncheck “Show compatible hardware”. From the “Manufacturer” list, choose “Microsoft”, and from the “Network Adapter” list, choose “MAC Bridge Miniport”. (It can be any device the user is allowed to uninstall.) *here I chose the first entry, Generic Broadband device driver.
Back in the device manager, delete the device that just turned into the “MAC Bridge Miniport” device.
Once done removing the bad miniports, reboot. Don’t skip this, it’s important. Otherwise there is a change things will go bad again.
And it works!!! Rebooted two times just to be sure.