Using Wireless (Cellular EVDO Network) Card with Vista

[Guest]

I've purchased an add-on wireless cellular network mini-card for my laptop
that allows high speed network access via my cellular provider's network.
Each time I boot up my laptop and establish the wireless connection, Vista
presents me with a screen asking me to "Select a location for the -3G
Connection network', and I have to choose either Home, Work or Public
Location. No matter what I choose, this dialog will always pop-up the next
time I boot up and reconnect to the wireless network. The laptop now has
accumulated about 15 of these network profiles, and there's no end in sight.
How do I get Vista to recognize that I've already set up a profile for this
network, and stop from adding additional profiles?

 

[Karl Froelich [MS]]

TD,

Would you mind sending me the name of your celular carrier, and the specific
nomenclature of the card you're using? I own figuring this out, and will do
what I can to help.

K.

 

[Guest]

Hi Karl

The cellular carrier is Telus (location is Vancouver, BC Canada), and the
card is a Sierra Wireless Aircard 595. FYI, I'm a MS Small Business
Specialist partner, and also posted this question to the Partner
newsgroup....the reply I just received today from that newsgroup indicated
the following:

"I'm afraid that this is an expected behavior. Since this is a security
enhancement in Windows Vista, and all local computer firewall security
policy relies on the type of the network connection (Home/Work/Public),
we're not able to change the behavior for now. I have sent the feedback to
Windows Vista product team, and I hope that they will improve the user
experience in future release of Hotfix or Service Pack."

If this is the case, I'm just about at the point of uninstalling Vista in
favor of XP, since this issue affects a client of mine who is not
technologically savvy. If I try to show him how to manually delete the
countless profiles that have been created, and hope that he can repeat the
process time and time again, he's very likely going to do more harm than good
to his laptop. Irony of this is that he chose to go with Vista, as he was
led to believe that it was more user-friendly than XP, and he wouldn't ever
have to perform this type of maintenance (which he would consider to be quite
complex).

Regards,

Terry Dawydiak
TD Computer Solutiosn Inc.

 

[Guest]

Some additional research regarding this problem....

A Microsoft tech suggested that the reason for Vista's behavior in this
circumstance was because the wireless cellular EVDO card picked up a
different IP and gateway address each time it made a connection to the
cellular network. I can confirm that's not the case....I restarted the
computer several times, each time making the connection to the cellular EVDO
network (and each time being presented with a 'Set Network Location' dialog
box), and I observed the resulting IP address assigned to the wireless EVDO
aircard. It was the same IP address each time, for both the client and
server that it connects to....so I don't think that's the problem.
However....and I think this is important.....if I don't restart or shutdown
Vista, but simply disconnect / reconnect the wireless service, the 'Set
Network Location' dialog does not appear. I did that numerous times within
the active Vista session, and that dialog box never came back.....it only
seems to 'forget' the network profile when Vista is turned off.