Unable to change network type

Hey there,

A few times a year I go away from my home station and take my tower and laptop with me. As my tower doesn't have a wireless adapter I connect to the the internet by plugging it into my laptop and sharing it's wireless connection. It's all been fine up until now. I've just plugged the ethernet cable between laptop and PC but the network has come up as Unidentified and has made it Public and as such I can't access the internet from my PC (surfing fine here on my laptop though, it's the LAN connection that's giving me issues).

I've no idea why it's doing this as in the past it has worked fine. I can't seem to change the network type as clicking on it only allows me to change the name and icon, not the type. It might be interesting to note that viewing the network from my PC it is a Home network but my laptop seems to think it's Unidentified.

Can anyone clue me on on how to fix this please as this issue has never cropped up before.

- CableDolt

Ninja-edit: Both machines are running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Maybe this info will help
Windows 7 Network connections are stuck in Public mode

Edit: Doh - I see that you were able to click the link, so that is probably not the issue. I'm still hunting for the info that I saw on this once.

Hi,

Thanks for the link. I tried to use the MicrosoftFixIt tool but unfortunately when I tried to set the unidentified network as a Home one it said it couldn't do it, which is a little annoying. Thanks anyway though.

- CableDolt

Kari,

Thanks but it's not possible to do this. The text that says Public Network is non-clickable so I can't change its network type.

maybe this
Unidentified Networks - Set as Private or Public

Do you assign a static IP to the desktop or let it get an IP starting with "169.."?

Err R.E. setting IPs I have no idea; my tech know-how doesn't extend that far I'm afraid.

I checked your link but it would seem that I can't access the Local Security Policy editor, nor the Local Group Policy editor as a quick Google reveals they're Ultimate-only perks and I'm running Home Premium. I tried the second option (the .reg file) but that appears to have had no effect on my ability to change the network type.

According to this post
Unidentified Networks - Set as Private or Public
the registry files should work on any version of W7.

Maybe you should post a comment to the thread under that tutorial.

Could be worth trying that.

As an aside note, I just ran the Diagnose function on the LAN connection itself and it found a problem "Local Area Connection doesn't have a valid IP configuration". Could this be where my issues are lying?

Apologies for the double post but a quick update on the situation:

Did a reboot on my laptop and ran the .reg file again. My LAN network has now changed from Public to a Work location but is still Unidentified so as such I can't access the internet through my PC still.

Does this mean there's some sort of IP problem going on, from what I found in my previous post?