Sysprep and Wireless Network Configuration

[Tim Huntley]

Hello,

After running sysprep on WinXP, the wireless network configuration
settings are lost. This makes sense, since they seem to be stored
under an adapter-specific registry setting:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WZCSVC\Parameters\Adapters\<GUID of
adapter>

Sysprep seems to recreate the network settings, so adapters would have
new GUIDs. This is a problem that other have noted:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&[email protected]

but no one seems to have come up with a solution. Is there any
automated way of setting values like the SSID programatically? The
WZCSAPI.dll has been suggested by some, but it's API isn't documented.
Is there any sort of scripting approach that might work?

Thanks in advance,

-Tim Huntley

 

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Is there any automated way of setting values like the SSID
programatically? The WZCSAPI.dll has been suggested by some, but
it's API isn't documented. Is there any sort of scripting approach
that might work?

It does seem that WZCSAPI is undocumented and there is no documented
programmatic interface to the WZCSVC (Wireless Zero Configuration
service).

If you have a Server 2003 infrastructure, you can use Group Policy to
configure WZCSVC:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0703.mspx

For programmatic solutions, the best I can find is WRAPI:

http://ramp.ucsd.edu/pawn/wrapi/

This is a DLL which allows you to set the SSID etc. from a C/C++
program, but you have to disable WZCSVC before you can use it.

You might try asking again in the windows.server.scripting group. I
am interested in a better answer myself.

- Pat

 

[Tim Huntley]

Pat,

Thanks for your response. After speaking with MS support, it seems
that there isn't a great solution. The choices are:

1. Configure the SSID on a test system and grab the registry values
under
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WZCSVC\Paraneters\Interfaces\<adapter GUID>.
Hard-code
these values into a utility that looks up the GUID of the adapter in
question, creates the appropriate registry key and places the
hard-coded values underneath
it. Ugly as it is, this approach worked on a test system.

2. As you suggested, don't configure the SSID during installation, let
the configuration get pushed down to the workstation after the inital
(wired) domain logon, using the Active Directory Group Policy settings
in Windows Server 2003 that support wireless configuration. If you
don't need an initial wireless logon, this does the job.

3. Some as-yet-undiscovered scripting capability that might run during
the [GuiRunOnce] section of an unattended install.

Using netset.exe was explored briefly, but it doesn't support wireless
configuration options. Various occult options were also explored, but
I'll save the description of those for another newsgroup.

Regards,

-Tim
(e-mail address removed)