Thinkpads Forum

I would like to disable automatic location switching in Access Connecions, since it bothers me with a "New ethernet port" message each time I connect to the wired network in my office, where I have a fixed IP address.

But I can't, since the controls in the window are all dimmed: I can't deselect the option "Enable automatic location switching".

Any hint?

Regards,
Neb

PS. I run an administrator account on XP

Is ac installed using a profile distribution package? If ac is installed by someone else and you don't know for sure then i'm pretty sure they did. Using a profile distribution package you have the option to enable/disable the feature you want and is mostly used by IT departments to control what features the user should be allowed to change.

If that is the case the settings that prevent changes can be enabled again in the registry on your computer, but i don't know the exact registry keys that must be changed. Another option is to uninstall and then reinstall ac again. Maybe you have to delete some of the keys related to ac in registry before reinstalling ac again. If you delete the profiles as well that is stored in the registry those have to be recreated or you can export them before uninstall.

What version of ac do you use?

Thanks for your replay Wiz.

No, AC wasn't installed by someone else. I wiperd out Vista, reinstalled a clean XP, and then through TV System Update I installed all the most important utilities, among which Access Connections (v. 4.42, the latest).

Then I used System Migration Assistant to migrate all the AC profiles from my previous Thinkpad, may that be the problem? (however, in the originating Thinkpad I can select and deselect at will the automatic location switching)

Regards
Neb

I never used the System Migration Assistant so maybe there is some kind of problem there. I would try to uninstall/reinstall ac like described. I'm sure there is some setting in registry that cause this problem, but might be hard to figure out without some kind of documenation.
I had a issue when i did a upgrade of ac earlier when i suddenly couldn't change any of the profiles. I fixed that issue by doing some changes in the registry for each profile, but it wasn't very obvious what key i had to change and what the value should be.

I found the registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Install]
@=""
"Path"="C:\\Programmi\\ThinkPad\\ConnectUtilities"
"Version"="4.42"
"BuildID"="7MCN38WW"
"BackupACAPIEx"=hex(2):00,00
"BackupWSAPIEx"=hex(2):00,00
"szCcpData"=hex:5c,3c,e2,36,75,9e,c0,ae,7e,aa,54,27,31,64,97,3c
"szCcpDataLen"=dword:00000010
"AllowPrfCreationThruFWN"=dword:00000001
"NoWarningMsgForUnencryptedNW"=dword:00000001
"HideServicesMenu"=dword:00000001
"DisableLocationSwitchingFeatureChanges"=dword:00000001

Setting its value from 1 to zero enables all the controls in the GUI.

Regards
Neb