Wireless issues on a Domain

[pdxr]

Hi all,

I'm brand new to the forums, so please be patient with me.

I'm not a new person to Windows and I think I know it pretty well. Unfortunately, it appears I have met my match with this problem.

I run a Windows Server 2003 AD Domain at home. Recently, I started to play around with a copy of Windows 7 Professional with the hopes I would upgrade my computers. It works flawlessly on the 3 desktop computers (and by flawlessly, I mean, as flawless by Windows standards). When I stuck it on my laptop though, I experienced an unusual problem.

Windows 7 installs nicely on the laptop - all drivers installed and it runs smoothly. I can connect to my wireless network, there are about 6 wireless networks that appear in the list. Then I join it to the domain. After it has been joined to the domain, the list of wireless networks is empty (even if I'm sitting beside the access point). I set up a wireless network profile in the N&S center and it still does not connect. So I removed it from the domain. Low and behold, I can see wireless networks again.

My thought was that this is something in the group policy that kills the wireless network. Unfortunately, I have no clue what option in Server 2003 would govern this (I haven't gone in and created any wireless policies).

I've looked through Google and come up with only a handful of possible solutions. None of them have worked as they were all slightly different problems from mine.

Has anyone experienced this problem? Does anyone have a solution for it?

Chris.

 

[pdxr]

It's nothing to do with the network location. The list is empty, network location suggests that there is a connection available. My wireless network connection is always disconnected and it never presents any networks to connect to.

 

[ultraplanet]

Windows firewall settings are different for a Domain network and a Private network. All the inbound network discovery rules are disabled on a domain network. You might try to turn off windows firewall.

When you join a domain the domain firewall policy is selected by default.

 

[pdxr]

Hi Ultraplanet, thanks for the response. I've looked at the network settings and turned a mixture of the firewall and network discovery on and off - no change can be reported.

That said, I have been able to conduct a bit of further testing. I built up a Server 2008 R2 domain controller (separate from my environment) and joined the laptop to that domain. The wireless WORKS. I don't get it. What is it about the Windows 2003 domain / policies, that could be killing the wireless networking components in Windows 7??