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

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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

Open "RegEdit"

Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles"

Locate the Network Location

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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56 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-04-07T23:44:18+00:00

hi..

thank you for the reply, but I have tried that already and it does not fix my issue. I am attaching 2 pictures of my problem. As you can see, on one side it says my connection is HOME, but on the other it says PUBLIC PROFILE is the current one. I have even tried a fresh Win 7 64bit installation and it was fixed but then after a few windows updates it went back to the same issue.

1.

2.
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Anonymous

2014-04-08T05:59:14+00:00

Not sure if my problem is exactly the same as others but here goes. Just had a BSOD and rebooted. After reboot other machines would no longer see this machine. In the Network and Sharing Center under View your active networks the Network looked to be set to Home Network but Found the current profile to now be Public instead of Home or Work in the Network and Sharing Center/Advanced sharing settings. My Public/Network Discovery was set to Turn off network discovery. Upon setting Turn on network discovery was now able to see the machine on the network. Not what I wanted but got me by for the moment. I also noticed the Windows Firewall showed the Public networks as Connected and the Home or work (private) networks as Not Connected.

I ended up changing the Public/Network Discovery back to Turn off network discovery. I then deleted the Device Driver and its software for the Network Adapter with the problem and did a reboot. After the system rebooted and I logged on, the Win7 found the locally stored device driver for the Network Adapter and completed its installation. Now the network is back as it should be with current profile set to Home or Work.
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Anonymous

2014-04-08T19:45:55+00:00

hi..

thank you for the reply, but I have tried that already and it does not fix my issue. I am attaching 2 pictures of my problem. As you can see, on one side it says my connection is HOME, but on the other it says PUBLIC PROFILE is the current one. I have even tried a fresh Win 7 64bit installation and it was fixed but then after a few windows updates it went back to the same issue.

1.

2.

Hello,

This was the exacly problem that I was having, I used the fix and the problem was solved, you have ran the fix as a administrator?
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Anonymous

2014-04-08T21:34:41+00:00

Im not sure what happened, but I have run this Fix program a bounch of times and now I ran it and now it fixed it.. it doesn't give me the option to run as Administrator though... but now it seems to have been fixed..I wonder what keeps changing this setting..specially since it's a fresh Win 7 installation...well. let me rephrase..once I installed the OS the problem is not there, it only comes after some windows updates.
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