Playing around with my Raspberry Pi I encountered an annoying problem on my PC. After deciding to do a clean install on the Pi in order to try some new things, the second time around I gave the Pi a different name. The new entity showed up in the network list all right – but so did the old one, even though it simply didn’t exist anymore.
Nothing I did would get rid of it, and after searching the web it became clear that no one seemed to know how to do it. Every time the question was asked, the “experts” answering defaulted to talking about network cards or entire networks, which is not the same thing! The problem I – and apparently a lot of other people – were having was that network nodes didn’t disappear when the device on that node did. There was no “delete” option on right click, or anywhere else.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got rid of mine by simply dragging the phantom item to the waste bin. I deleted and redetected the whole network first, and I’m not sure if that is relevant, but the phantom entry is now gone. I hope that helps someone somewhere.