Reassigned NIC numbers

I have a Dell PowerEdge server with two onboard Intel NICs running W2K Server. I had to uninstall the nics during a troubleshooting exercise and when the machine came back up the nics were labeled #3 and #4 in device manager. When I configured IP address info I got a message about a device that is hidden or a legacy device that is not functioning that has the same IP info. I want to have the nics as #1 and #2 as originally configured but can’t find where to change the designation. I tried to uninstall through device manager but they come back as #3 and #4.