Can't enable Microsoft Network Adaptor Multiplexor Protocol after Windows 10 Upgrade

After I upgraded my laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, my network connectivity was gone because all protocols were unchecked in the adapter settings. When I went to go turn them all back on, I got my network connection back, but I couldn't (and still can't) enable the Multiplexor protocol. When I select it and click 'Ok', a dialog informs me that my selections will cause it to be disabled:

If I click No, it returns me to the "Ethernet Properties" sheet with the multiplexor protocol disabled. If I click Yes, it unchecks the multiplexor protocol and then closes the dialog and property sheet.

The googler wasn't very helpful, here. There are a few threads out there in which users express the same issue, but the support they received was quite useless.

I also tried to do this in PowerShell to see if it would either a) just work, or if it would b) give me a more useful error message.

C:\Users\Benjamin> Get-NetAdapterBinding -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet" -ComponentID ms_implat
Name DisplayName ComponentID Enabled
---- ----------- ----------- -------
Ethernet Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor Protocol ms_implat False
C:\Users\Benjamin> Enable-NetAdapterBinding -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet" -ComponentID ms_implat
C:\Users\Benjamin> Get-NetAdapterBinding -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet" -ComponentID ms_implat
Name DisplayName ComponentID Enabled
---- ----------- ----------- -------
Ethernet Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor Protocol ms_implat False

Turns out that was really too much to hope for.

While reading it did occur to me to make sure the NdisImPlatform service was running, and I made sure using sc.exe:

C:\Users\Benjamin> sc.exe config NdisImPlatform start= demand
[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS
C:\Users\Benjamin> sc.exe start NdisImPlatform
SERVICE_NAME: NdisImPlatform TYPE : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER STATE : 4 RUNNING (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 PID : 0 FLAGS :

After this, I tried the things I described above again, but to no avail.

Also, ultimately this is yak-shaving in order to get bridged networking to work in VirtualBox, and so I thought I might try to repair the VirtualBox installation (by running the installer again), but that didn't help either.

Anybody know why this is happening in Windows 10 and how I can fix it?

3 Answers

Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor Protocol should be left unticked. It is only used with NIC Teaming - i.e. where you have two physical network interfaces that are being used in a load balancing or redundant configuration. In that case the two physical NICs have only this binding ticked (all others cleared), and the team adapter has the normal bindings ticked - but not this one.

What version of Virtual Box are you running - I had the same problems, but decided to upgrade to the newly released version 5 of VirtualBox - which fixed the network adapters not displaying in Bridged mode, but I still have problems getting into the VM - Port 22 & 80 just won't connect inbound.

I can go out of the VM to the internet and can start (and connect to) the machine etc with the VirtualBox program, but I like to run things headless with VirtualBox manager on the command-line. :(

Ultimately I never found a way to fix this directly; I installed Virtual Box 5 - which I didn't realize had released until I was looking for a solution to this - and things went back to working.