XP Networking has disappeared

[Phil Hibbs]

I have looked through various posts that are related to the
disappearance of the "Connect To" or "Network Connections" options,
and will try some of the suggested solutions, but here is my situation
in case anyone has more suggestions. Also I will post my solution in
reply to this if I solve it.

When XP boots, it tries to give the impression of having finished
booting as soon as possible, so it will display the start menu long
before the various subsystems (such as My Documents, Network
Connections, etc,) have inished configuring themselves. I hit the
Start menu and pointed the mouse at "Conect To", and the machine
stopped responding for over a minute. When it did respond, there was a
little pop-up menu window only containing the word "Empty" in grey,
and it wouldn't go away. I logged off and back on, left it for a good
few minutes, then hit the Start menu again. No "Connect To" option.
Under the Control Panel ... Network Connections, there were no options
(no Rockdirect, no Freeserve), and when I double-clicked on Network
Connections, the window was empty.

I rebooted, same thing, twice.

I tried the Network Connection Wizard, asked it to configure a network
with no Internet connection, it completed but did nothing. No network
options.

I tried again setting the machine up for Internet connection sharing,
which let me pick "Rockdirect" or "Freeserve" as the internet
connection (so they still exist somewhere in the depths of the machine
config); it failed saying "an error has occurred, try manual
configuration or try again with different settings".

Unfortunately I had turned off System Restore at the behest of some
software installation (probably Norton Internet Security 2004), so I
can't use that to fix it.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I have looked through various posts that are related to the
disappearance of the "Connect To" or "Network Connections" options,
and will try some of the suggested solutions, but here is my situation
in case anyone has more suggestions. Also I will post my solution in
reply to this if I solve it.

When XP boots, it tries to give the impression of having finished
booting as soon as possible, so it will display the start menu long
before the various subsystems (such as My Documents, Network
Connections, etc,) have inished configuring themselves.

Phil,

there is a policy that allows you to delay the logon prompt
until the network is initialized, just in case you want that.

I hit the
Start menu and pointed the mouse at "Conect To", and the machine
stopped responding for over a minute. When it did respond, there was a
little pop-up menu window only containing the word "Empty" in grey,
and it wouldn't go away. ...

I tried the Network Connection Wizard, asked it to configure a network
with no Internet connection, it completed but did nothing. No network
options.

Unfortunately I had turned off System Restore at the behest of some
software installation (probably Norton Internet Security 2004), so I
can't use that to fix it.

Oh, great! Probably some shoddy software that wanted to prevent
a quick and radical uninstall. -) I hope you have meanwhile
turned System Restore back on. It is perhaps the most useful new
feature of Windows XP.

As to the network connection problem, please have a look at
http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[Phil Hibbs]

there is a policy that allows you to delay the logon prompt
until the network is initialized, just in case you want that.

Any more info on that? Interesting statement, but what do I do to use
this "policy"?

I hope you have meanwhile turned System Restore back on.
It is perhaps the most useful new feature of Windows XP.

I will turn it on when I get my network working again, but I don't
want to accidentally restore back to a borken network setup!

Phil.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Any more info on that? Interesting statement, but what do I do to use
this "policy"?

Phil,

Control panel, Administrative tools, Group policy, Computer
configuration, Administrative templates, System, Logon, For
start and logon always wait for the network. Sorry for the
possibly inaccurate translation, but I'm currently not using an
English Windows. Hope you can find it.

I will turn it on when I get my network working again, but I don't
want to accidentally restore back to a borken network setup!

Well, it never does it on its own. But not having the choice to
roll back is a severe limitation.

Hans-Georg