Disable Network Location Box

[mbedford]

Does anyone know if you can disable or administratively complete the "Select your network location" box on Win 7?

 

Its the one which asks you where you are located (Work, Home or Public)

 

Thanks

Mike

[SYNACK]

This box should not show up for anyone inside the domain that the computer is joined to, it would only really be an issue for users outside the network environment like staff laptops connecting to wireless at home. I got around the elevation restriction in Vista for joining laptops to home wireless and setting the location by adding the teachers group to the "Network Configuration Operators" group, this does appear to be a little better in 7 though.

 

You may be able to specify the behaviour on a windows 2008 domain policy by configuring the options under

Computer config > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Network list manager

properties. You can configure the actions for unidentified networks and possibly add in names of known networks to identify them via policy.

 

Under the Unidentified networks item you can configure how to treat the network and whether the user can change that catagorization. Not sure if it suppresses the dialogue or not though.

 

You don't really want to get rid of this feature entirely though as it provides extra security by applying the firewall differently for different locations.

 

Under the all network item there is an option to block the user from editing the network location also so this is probably a good candidate to block that prompt.