How do I change my network location from Public to Home in Win7?

Anonymous
2012-05-04T04:00:34+00:00

On my server I am running Win 7 Pro 64-bit (SP1) with a wired Ethernet connection to my router.

I have several other networked devices in my network including wired and wireless devices,  Win 7 PCs, a Win XP PC, and some other devices such as network backup, and media center.  I am having problems with devices seeing each other (especially my server) and sharing resources (files and printing).

On my server I am able to connect to the internet through my wired connection.  However, in "Network and Sharing Center" under active networks I see "You are currently not connected to any networks."  The link to "Connect to a network" shows that I have no networks to connect to.   When I try to connect to my homegroup or to create a homegroup, I am told "To create or join a homegroup, your computer's network location must be set to Home."  Mine is set to public and I cannot change this as to make this change requires me to click on the Home/Work/Public icon/link in my active network and I do not have any active (or inactive) network.  Therefore there is no link to allow me to get to the "Change Network Location" dialog box.

I have tried trouble shooting the network (no problems found) and the Homegroup troubleshoot (no problems found).

I have considered doing a Win 7 Repair Install to fix whatever network configuation problems I am unable to access.  However, my original disk is an OEM Windows 7 Pro 64-bit without SP1.  Now that my machine has been on SP1 for about a year, it will not allow me to do a Repair Install and the version on my machine is newer (greater) than what is on the installation disk.  Also I considered un-installing SP1 but that also failed.  Some error message about missing files. I even tried the Command Line un-install of SP1 and that also failed.

What can I do to fix this short of a complete wipe of the disk drive and a clean install?

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UPDATE: Feb. 13, 2015  -  Finally Fixed!

The post on Jan 28, 2015 by BennyPootron led me to the solution.

In RegEdit, at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles"  I deleted all the profiles under this (I had three). 

Also, at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Signatures\Unmanaged" were three corresponding items which I also deleted.  This cleaned the slate, so to speak, and when I rebooted, I was able to change my network location to Home and then join my Home Group.

Many thanks to BennyPootron for the insight that led to my solution.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Internet and connectivity

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Anonymous
2015-02-13T22:13:03+00:00

I don't know if this applies to Windows 7, but it does work in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

  1. Open "RegEdit"
  2. Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles"
  3. Locate the Network Location
  4. Change the DWORD Value "Category" to 1

If this doesn't work, delete the key of the network, restart your computer, and repeat.  It should work after that.

Not exactly the answer, but this led to the solution.  FINALLY FIXED!!   Here's how:

In RegEdit, at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles"  I had three profiles with names such as {4A3BFF36-4EA6-4415-AA5F-46CE449C95AB}.  I tried several things including changing the DWORD value of the item "Category" to 1 in all three of these profiles.  That did NOT work.

However, I eventually deleted all three of the Profiles. 

Also, at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Signatures\Unmanaged" were three corresponding items which I also deleted.  This cleaned the slate, so to speak.

THIS WORKED!

When I re-booted, I was able to change my network from Public to Private and it walked me through the process of joining an existing Home Group established by another computer in our household.

Finally nearly 3 years after my original post, I have the problem fixed.

Many thanks to BennyPootron for the insight to a solution.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-07-19T21:27:50+00:00

    So...anyone figure out how to change or if Microsoft has made it easier to change the "Network Location" an adaptor gets assigned to?  It's caused me a mountain of head aches in our iSCSI environment.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-06-05T21:39:03+00:00

    Please note, I stated that I "checked the registry." I was a system admin (AIX, UnixWare, Linux) in a former life so I'm aware that making changes when uncertain as to the outcome is just a bad idea. 

    In your reply, there is no image under "It looks like this."

    I have run the troubleshooter, as administrator with "apply repairs automatically" checked. I ran the troubleshooter on the network adapters as well as the homegroup (which, as I mentioned, I do not use).

    The network adapter troubleshooter only lets me know that "troubleshooting didn't identify the problem."

    Troubleshooting the homegroup finds only that "a problem occurred that can't be fixed automatically." When I attempt to create a homegroup, the message is "this computer can't connect to a homegroup" which is obvious, because my network connection shows as public even though the registry entry is 1 or private. 

    I have also run a couple of fixits after checking the logs. There was a message, "The ICS_IPV6 failed to configure IPv6 stack" and another related to DHCP allocation. I could not find any messages related to homegroup, nlasvc, network access protection, network and sharing center, etc. I occasionally get a clashing IP address error but that's it. I've read on other posts that sometimes when there is a duplicate IP, windows will assume the network is not private. 

    I've cleared the event log and will watch to see what is going now. 

    I can indeed see the video you attached. It mentions reading cab files and looking at powershell commands and theme packs.

    If I find some more time to focus on this issue, I'll look into that. Frankly, this issue has taken far too much time already. It's almost time I reformat and install Linux but I'll give it a little more time. 

    Thank you for your input.

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  3. @CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-06-05T16:44:08+00:00

    The Information Bar is a UI element that was popularized in web browsers like IE, Firefox, and Chrome, but is also used in Windows Explorer to provide information about network discovery being turned off (because of a public-set network location), or you'll also see it in places like "this library can't be indexed" and such.  It looks like this:

    If you run the built in Homegroup troubleshooter diagnostic (even if you don't have a homegroup), which is really just a group of PowerShell commands, can be used to reset your network location to private.  That's probably what I'd recommend over manual edits in the registry. Also just remember after you make changes manually you'd have to reboot to initialize it, so it can be hard to tell if it's working. So yeah, PowerShell for the win :)

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-06-04T22:09:34+00:00

    This is for Windows 7, is it not? I'm looking at this question on answers.microsoft.com and it reads, "Applies to Windows | Windows 7 | Network & Internet"

    That's what I'm running. To be more precise, I'm running Windows 7 Professional, SP1, 64 bit on a Dell 6220.

    But to follow along, I don't know what an Infobar Popup is, perhaps a Windows 8 feature?

    When I select Homegroup, the message on my screen is, "This computer can't connect to a homegroup."

    And below that is, "To create or join a homegroup, your computer's network location must be set to Home."

    The information I have, which could be wrong, is that the category number for the Home network on Windows 7 should be 1. 

    Public 0
    Home 1
    Domain 2

    My computer's registry entry is a 1, yet my system still behaves as though it is set to Public or 0. The schema I copied here seems to be correct as other networks listed in the registry which are and should be set to 0 are indeed set to 0 (such as Panera-wifi and similar networks).

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