Access to Network and Dial-Up Connections blocked

[Roger Fink]

I am in a losing battle with my IBM laptop over access to Network and
Dial-Up Connections (shades of HAL 9000), which it will not let me into come
hell or high water from either of the two administrative profiles on this
machine. I even created a third administrative profile in an attempt to
outsmart it, but access to this is just blocked, period.

I'm not sure if the IBM "Access Connections" program on the laptop, which
does seem to work, covers the same territory, but I'd like to be able to fix
this, which is the only listing in Control Panel I can't open.

 

[John John (MVP)]

What happens when you try to open it? Are you recieving any error
messages? What about the Event Log, are any errors showing there? If
this is a permissions issue check and make sure that you have proper
permissions on the Ncpa.cpl file. You may have other (registry keys)
permissions which may prevent opening the file, try this and see if it
fixes things:

Aaron Stebner's WebLog
Solving setup errors by using the SubInACL tool to repair file and
registry permissions
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

John

 

[Roger Fink]

This is not familiar terrtory for me, so I'm following along as best I can.
I assume you are referring to Event Viewer. Under System Log there is a
recent warning event. When I doublle click it, it says "Adapter Intel
PRO/100VE Network Connection Adapter Link Down".

The message when I click the Control Panel icon is "You do not have
permission to open the Network and Dial-up Connection folder". There is no
error number.

I can't get to this right now but I will follow up on your suggestions. I'm
unfamiliar with the Ncpa.cpl file, but I'll do what I can and post back.
Please feel free to add anything else in the interim.

 

[John John (MVP)]

It sounds like you may have disabled it through one of the Group Policy
Objects.

To open the Group Policy snap-in enter gpedit.msc in the Start Menu
Run box. In the Group Policly look at:

User Configuration
\Administrative Templates
\Start Menu & Taskbar
\Remove Network Connection from Start Menu

Set this policy to "Not Configured". You may need to reboot to have the
GPO apply... or wait about 90 minutes for the default GPO refresh rate
to reapply the policy.

John

 

[Roger Fink]

That solved the problem. Thanks very much.

Unfortunately a new, mission critical one has crept up. I can't open System
in Control Panel (nothing happens at all - no error message). Before posting
this I checked every other item in Control Panel and they all open up. I
also notice that, unlike my desktop, when I right-click My Computer, there
is no Properties option, which would open the same panel. I re-enabled
Remove Network Connection from Start Menu to see if that had something to do
with it, but that had no effect, so I doubt that the enabled/not configured
change caused it, but whatever the problem, it is fairly recent, since I was
able to open System a couple of days ago.

 

[John John (MVP)]

Look in the registry under either or both the HKCU or HKLM branch to see
if a NoPropertiesMyComputer policy exists :
http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/980/

If the policy is not in the registry look in the \WINNT\system32 folder
for the SYSDM.CPL file and make sure that you have proper permissions on
the file.

Did you by any chance recently upgrade, change or add security software
to your machine? New or different AntiVirus or Firewall or other
security suite? These applications now often disable some of those
things without alerting the users. Also make sure that you have no
virus or other malware on the machine.

John

 

[Roger Fink]

I will do those checks and post back, but to answer your question, I
recently upgraded about twenty basic drivers from the Lenovo website driver
matrix for this model. I also upgraded the BIOS and BIOS embedded
controller.

Allow me a rant: We don't know that the driver upgrades are necessarily the
cause of the problem but the fact that they could be I find outrageous,
since it's a normal procedure that "intermediate" level users are encouraged
to do (and should). How many are going to find their way to this group to
(hopefully) get bailed out? The more likely destination: the repair shop.

 

[Roger Fink]

One of the things I did was download and install the IBM hidden restore
partition, which was not on the machine. That could be the culprit.


[snip]

Did you by any chance recently upgrade, change or add security
software
to your machine? New or different AntiVirus or Firewall or other
security suite? These applications now often disable some of those
things without alerting the users. Also make sure that you have no
virus or other malware on the machine.

[snip]

 

[John John (MVP)]

I kind of doubt that would have changed security or policy settings, it
could have caused a drive letter change but other than that I can't see
it changing specific group policies or other registry based policies.

John

One of the things I did was download and install the IBM hidden restore
partition, which was not on the machine. That could be the culprit.


[snip]

Did you by any chance recently upgrade, change or add security
software
to your machine? New or different AntiVirus or Firewall or other
security suite? These applications now often disable some of those
things without alerting the users. Also make sure that you have no
virus or other malware on the machine.

[snip]

 

[Roger Fink]

Not sure how I managed to so misinterpret your words. I will work on my
reading skills.

At any rate, Spybot S&D caught it:

<Microsoft.Windows.System:

[SBI $C9D262B4] Settings (Registry change, nothing done)

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1715567821-1606980848-1343024091-1001\Software\Microsoft
\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoPropertiesMycomputer>

It offered to "fix selected problem". Not sure if it would actually fix
things, I was nervous about it, but I went ahead and the fix worked.

Apart from normal updates I haven't made any changes to the antivirus or
antispyware programs, so I guess the cause of this is still a mystery. FWIW,
one more recent event I neglected to mention - I installed a wireless card
and driver (the machine had no wireless capability), which seemed to go OK.

Roger