Windows – How to change the MAC address of Microsoft Loopback Adapter

mac addressnetwork-adapternetworkingwindows xp

I am trying to designate a MAC address for MS loopback adapter. Installation is fine. I see in device manager, the adapter and in advanced tab, I enter the mac address I desire. But when I do in cmd prompt ipconfig -all, I see the original mac address is retained.

I did search a bit but google is not extremely useful. I am hoping an easy solution exists to this problem. My os is XP.

thanks,
KD

Best Answer

It seems that the adapter will accept only locally administered MAC addresses as valid (makes sense). This is signified by 7th leftmost bit set to 1, so MAC must start with 02. I changed it without any problems: enter image description here

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3:

    Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
    Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Loopback Adapter
    Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 02-FA-FA-FA-FA-FA
    Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
    IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1
    Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
    Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

If you try to define it as Globally unique (00), it treats it as invalid and reverts to default: enter image description here

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3:

    Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
    Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Loopback Adapter
    Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 02-00-4C-4F-4F-50
    Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
    IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1
    Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
    Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
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