First of all, on your Windows 11 or 10 PC/Laptop, find out the MAC addresses of your network cards; just open the Windows command prompt ( cmd ) and follow this guide. The MAC address will be immediately visible next to the Physical address items, corresponding to the Ethernet and WiFi cards. In the case of virtual interfaces (such as those installed by virtualisation software), the corresponding physical address is usually set to zero or generated randomly (apart from the first octet, which corresponds to the company developing the solution capable of managing virtual machines). Please note that the modification of the MAC address will not be definitive, of course: that is, the MAC address stored in the hardware on the single network card will not be altered at all.
Steps to Change MAC address on Windows 11 or 10
- Press Win + X and select “Device Manager”.
- Expand the ” Network adapters ” column and double-click on the required one.
- In the adapter properties, go to the “Advanced” tab.
- Select “Network Address”, then set any 12 alphanumeric values.
- Please note that your actual MAC address remains the same. You can return to it by selecting “None”.
Each network card, Ethernet or WiFi, has a MAC address (MAC stands for Media Access Control ). THE MANUFACTURER ASSIGNED the MAC address (there are no two cards with the same identifier in the world). It is 48 bits (6 bytes) long: the first three octets (one byte = eight bits) clarify the network card’s manufacturer, while the next three octets are specific to the single card.
