Fixed: unidentified network (public) + cabled LAN (home) = no internet?
Basically, whenever I connected my Windows 7 (64-bit) laptop to a local area network (LAN) or wifi router, I noticed that my laptop considered itself to be connected to two networks at once:
- the network to which I wanted to connect, showing as a home network
- a kind of phantom twin called “Unidentified Network”, showing as public
With the LAN at my office, this didn’t prevent access, though I suspect it was slowing it down, but when I tried connecting to a new router two days ago, there was no internet connection whatsoever.
I discovered that the following had half worked for one user, so I tried it myself and it fixed everything. Be warned that I am not fully aware of why it worked or what precisely it did, but it had no nasty side-effects for me:
- Run an “elevated command prompt”
– Press Start then type “command”
– Wait for “Command Prompt” to appear
– Right-click on Command Prompt, then select “Run as administrator“ - Type the command: netsh int ip reset C:\netsh.log.txt
– You will be advised to reboot, but do this after the next step - Type the command: netsh winsock reset
- Exit the command prompt by typing: exit
- Reboot and pray to your chosen divinity
For me this simple solution removed the phantom “Unidentified Network” and restored internet access; hopefully it will do the same for you. If not, I’m no networking expert so I’m not the man to ask, but there are some more ideas at:
[BTW: if your Windows Defender real-time scan option is on at the same time as Avast or another real-time anti-virus, it may affect your connection speed and overall PC performance; I discovered in passing that this was the case and ditched Defender, resulting in a sudden rise in my wifi speed. This was before I fixed the cabled LAN problem, but in theory it could also affect that.]
