"Unidentified network", can't turn on sharing

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Guest

My home PC has an ASUS motherboard with two embedded LAN ports. One is
connected to Comcast internet (directly, not through a router) and the other
is connected to a small home LAN with Vonage and a couple of other devices on
it. I use ICS through my home PC to let my home lan devices access the
internet.

When I install Vista RC1, the Internet works fine. But my home network
shows up as "Unidentified network". I can change it to Private, but I can't
rename it to Home LAN - the name Unidentified Network is read-only.

When I try to turn on file or printer sharing, I get a popup that asks
whether I want to set my network to be private or turn on sharing for public
networks. I don't want to do either! I want to turn on sharing for my home
lan AKA the Unidentified Network (already private), but I can't do this.

Another strange symptom is that the diagram at the top of the network and
sharing center says my pc->(multiple networks)->Internet. This is wrong and
if I look at the two networks listed below, only the Internet network says
Local and Internet - the Unidentified Network is local only.

The embedded 3com chipset behind my home LAN has drivers loaded, apparently
correctly - I can ping the other devices on my home network just fine. But
something is obviously wrong.

Does anybody know what Unidentified network means? Are there any setting
changes I can try or any useful guides I can read on Technet or someplace
that might help me get to the bottom of this?

I'd hate to see Vista go Gold with this sort of problem. I submitted a bug
report but that's a write-only mechanism, so I'm looking for advice in this
newsgroup.

Thanks for any help you can give me.
 
Had similar problem after RC-1 install. Ran through all troubleshooting
procedures. Finally stumbled on following suggestion in Vista Help:

"Turn off the power-saving option in the network adapter's properties (wired
network adapters only)"

Checked out the adapter properties and power saving option was indeed turned
on. Cleared the check box, and my home network magically appeared.
(but it is still named "Unidentified Network" !)
 
Thanks Harry. I tried your suggestion, but it didn't work for me. My
network is on and working, but it's called "Unidentified Network". My main
complaint is I can't turn on file or printer sharing without turning it on
for my Internet connection NIC as well!
 
I have RTM and it's still not fixed. You can not have the Internet connection
set to Public, your other LAN set to Private and File Sharing turned on.
Also, pc->(multiple networks)->Internet happens with RTM as well.
 
In the mean time, I went into the Control Panel->Network Center->Manage
Network Connections, selected my internet LAN card, Properties, and then
disable Client for Microsoft Networks + File and Printer Sharing

PS: I have and ASUS as well :-)
 
Paul,

Thanks for the update. I haven't had a chance to install RTM yet, so I'm
sorry to hear your report.

I wish Microsoft would read these threads and give us advice on fixing the
problem, or at least help us understand what's happening!
 
It's all very odd, I have Gigabyte nForce 430 with built in LAN and it comes
up with unidentified network Nvidia have drivers for Vista dated 06/02/2007
and still no network. Best thing I did is buy a £7.00 Realtec card and it
works a treat. Come on Microsoft/hardware vendors it not like Vista was a
surprise.
 
It's all very odd, I have GigabytenForce430 with built in LAN and it comes
up with unidentified network Nvidia have drivers for Vista dated 06/02/2007
and still no network. Best thing I did is buy a £7.00 Realtec card andit
works a treat. Come on Microsoft/hardware vendors it not like Vista was a
surprise.
Click to expand...

Ditto for me. Nforce 430 motherboard, wireless access works fine,
realtek nic works fine, but motherboard lan controller no go.
I was puzzled, but found someone had posted a review to Newegg (where
I bought motherboard) and said the lan controller worked fine with XP,
does not work with Vista.
 
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