Media sense and XP SP2

[Neculai Macarie]

Hi!

I have a laptop with a Intel Pro 100/ VE network card. I recently installed SP2 and
now the Media sensing feature cannot be disabled. I did the registry trick
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q239924/) and that helped, sort of. The routes are
not flushed now, but the link is still shown as unplugged and this breaks another app
that I would like to use on the road. The registry trick worked properly on SP1, but
it seems that SP2 is broken in that regard.

I don't have a "Always connected" setting to my network card... Is there some
workaround to this ? A way to really disable Media sensing ?

 

[Nathan McNulty]

I would read this section from that KB Article:

Note There are some side effects of disabling the "Media Sensing"
feature. For example, if you have a machine with two network adapters,
and you have the "Media Sensing" feature enabled, if one network adapter
does not work, it is unbound, and associated routes are removed so that
all traffic goes through the other network adapter (assuming a default
gateway is there). Also, if you are a roaming (portable) user, the
"Media Sensing" feature is what provides the ability to connect to any
network and have everything work, without restarting, release and
renewing, and so on. After disabling Media Sense and restarting, Windows
still shows the "Network Disconnected" icon on the TaskBar and the
'ipconfig' command still shows a "Media State .....: Cable Disconnected"
message when the cable is disconnected. However, the Network Interface
is bound to TCP/IP and you can verify this by looking at the route table
--you can use the "route print" command-- which shows the interface IP
address (you are also able to ping the IP address assigned to the NIC).