"lock" symbol when viewing LAN connection status

[Guest]

I have a saleman who is trying to connect his Windows XP Home Edition laptop
to our wired network here in the office. His LAN connection is set up for
DHCP. Our network here has a domain. The laptop can see our DHCP server and
gateway, but it doesn't have internet access. Before Monday, this worked
great, although I suspect something has been changed that I don't know about.
Two odd things about this are the "lock" symbol when I view the LAN
connection status and also that it says that Internet Sharing is turned on,
although when I check the properties, it's not turned on there. Any ideas?
Many thanks

 

[Brian]

Two odd things about this are the "lock" symbol when I view the LAN
connection status and also that it says that Internet Sharing is turned
on,
although when I check the properties, it's not turned on there. Any ideas?

The lock symbol means that he has the windows firewall turned on. In fact it
should say that when you look at the network connections window.

As for internet sharing, it doesn't need to be on and if he's left it on
while his system was connected to the internet at home, I'd make sure you
thoroughly scan his system before you allow it to be connected to your
network.

Brian