Changing public network to private - windows 8.1
oilman
Posts: 4,529 Forum Member
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Yesterday I tried to change my wifi network settings on my laptop from public to private on my W8.1 laptop so I could use Homegroup, but annoyingly, I found Windows had changed way from doing it in W8.1.
Before you could easily change under networking and share menu. On reading web, I found you have to go to PC settings on "Modern" interface and select network, connections, and right click on your wifi session and up pops a menu, with a "Find devices and Content" section and click button and set to on.
Ok - a bit of a pain - no big deal you might think. However my screen did not have a "Find devices and content" section. Now I was "snookered" and could not find any way to get round it. Went on web, and found lots of people had this same issue.
The most popular solution was to forget the network and rescan but as many people observed that did not always work. This is because when you tell windows to forget a network, it does not always clear registry properly. I went into registry
HK local machine>software>microsoft>windows nt>current version>network list>profiles
and found just about every wifi profile I had ever set up was there. I deleted them all, restarted PC, and connected to wifi, entering password etc, and went through PC setting route above confident I had cracked problem.
Of course, this failed miserably and I was really getting annoyed by now.
I searched web a bit further and came across this web page
http://www.tinkertry.com/how-to-change-windows-8-1-network-type-from-public-to-private/
HK local machine>software>microsoft>windows nt>current version>network list>profiles>{GUID}”Category” *
The author suggested changing value of "Category" (1 for private, 0 for public)
I changed the value to 1 from 0, saved registry and rebooted.
Hooray - success!
Well done Microsoft for turning something so easy to do into something hard to do (we all know tinkering with registry is not for beginners!)
I hope this helps anybody else with similar issues.
Before you could easily change under networking and share menu. On reading web, I found you have to go to PC settings on "Modern" interface and select network, connections, and right click on your wifi session and up pops a menu, with a "Find devices and Content" section and click button and set to on.
Ok - a bit of a pain - no big deal you might think. However my screen did not have a "Find devices and content" section. Now I was "snookered" and could not find any way to get round it. Went on web, and found lots of people had this same issue.
The most popular solution was to forget the network and rescan but as many people observed that did not always work. This is because when you tell windows to forget a network, it does not always clear registry properly. I went into registry
HK local machine>software>microsoft>windows nt>current version>network list>profiles
and found just about every wifi profile I had ever set up was there. I deleted them all, restarted PC, and connected to wifi, entering password etc, and went through PC setting route above confident I had cracked problem.
Of course, this failed miserably and I was really getting annoyed by now.
I searched web a bit further and came across this web page
http://www.tinkertry.com/how-to-change-windows-8-1-network-type-from-public-to-private/
HK local machine>software>microsoft>windows nt>current version>network list>profiles>{GUID}”Category” *
The author suggested changing value of "Category" (1 for private, 0 for public)
I changed the value to 1 from 0, saved registry and rebooted.
Hooray - success!
Well done Microsoft for turning something so easy to do into something hard to do (we all know tinkering with registry is not for beginners!)
I hope this helps anybody else with similar issues.
0
Comments
I tried that but it did not work (didn't mention that though) - only the final registry change worked. However, for other users, might be worth a try before delving into registry.
From 8.1, it seems Microsoft assumes you would probably only select if a network was private or public once.
The part I do not understand is why some people see the "Find devices and content" section and others don't. I wonder if it due to the fact I originally had W8(.0) and then upgraded to 8.1 and something was missed i.e. a bug!
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-8/change-from-public-to-private-network-in-windows-8/
My Linx 8 tablet has the Find devices section i.e opposite of you surface pro. Can'tsee why some have and others don't.
Need to checkout your link.