Installing Microsoft Loopback Adapter

Hey all, one of the feedback forms from the hands-on lab I presented about remote debugging indicated that you'd like to hear more information about how to use the Microsoft Loopback Adapter that I used to mimic a LAN connection within the local machine to connect the development OS to the virtual machine. Here are the steps I used to setup the loopback adapter. I am going to see about creating a more formal tip article for this and post it somewhere on MSDN's embedded site also. Please send me any feedback about whether or not this set of steps ends up working for you.....

Installing Microsoft Loopback Adapter

  • Go to the Add Hardware control panel
  • Click Next on the first wizard screen
  • When asked if the hardware is connected, select Yes and click Next
  • In the list of installed hardware, scroll to the bottom and select Add a new hardware device and click Next
  • Choose the option titled Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced) and click Next
  • In the list of common hardware types, select Network adapters and click Next
  • In the list of manufacturers, select Microsoft. Then in the list of network adapters, select Microsoft Loopback Adapter and click Next
  • Click Next one more time to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter and then press Finish

Now that you have installed the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, you need to configure an IP address for it.

Configuring Microsoft Loopback Adapter

  • Go to the Network Connections control panel
  • Locate the LAN or High-Speed Internet connection that has a Device name of Microsoft Loopback Adapter, right-click on it and choose Properties
  • Select the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) item and click Properties
  • Select the option to Use the following IP address and enter 192.168.2.1 for the IP address. This will cause a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 to appear
  • Click OK to accept the changes and Close to exit the Properties dialog

Now you can disable your current LAN connection and enable your Microsoft Loopback Adapter connection by right-clicking on each connection in the Network Connections control panel and choosing Enable or Disable.