Thinkpads Forum

When I select the Locations->Manage Profiles menu item in ThinkVantage Access Connections I see all my wireless profiles but the Create, Edit, Delete buttons are greyed out. There is no way I can edit any of these profiles.

Another item:
When exporting my location profiles, they were stored with a *.loc extension. Now when I try to import these files, the import dialog menu only looks for a *.loa extension!

Am using v. 4.2.3 of the Access Connection utility.

Your IT administrator may have configured Access Connections so that you don't have access to those settings. Found this in Access Connections Help:

Access Connections provides an administrator-only function which is enabled through a separately downloaded utility. Once this utility is run, the main menu of Access Connections will include an additional menu item - Profile Distribution.

Selecting the Profile Distribution option opens a window which shows all of the profiles that have been created within Access Connections. Administrators can select which profiles to include in a deployment package and can configure policies which define the network access and configuration privileges granted to client systems that are running Access Connections.

For more information, refer to the ThinkVantage Technologies Deployment Guide for Access Connections.

Actually this is a personal machine not on any domain.

Is the windows account you are using member of the administrators group? If not maybe the global settings that allow none administrators to apply and create location profiles is not selected.
I had a similar issue some time ago after upgrading AC to a new version were i suddenly were no longer able to delete or edit any of my profiles, but i think i was able to create (cannot remember). It had to do with the value of the registry key "m_szLocAccessData" under each profile. Since i have a lot of profiles it would be a pain to remember the setting for each of them and recreate them manuelly. So i exported the locations from registry, uninstalled AC, deleted the registry entries for AC and reinstalled AC. Then i created a test profile manually just to find the correct value for the "m_szLocAccessData" and imported the registry file to manually change the "m_szLocAccessData" using regedit to the correct value for all my profiles again.

Thanks, Wiz, that did the trick. All is well now.

If unable to edit location profiles (buttons greyed out), first make sure the Access Connections Global Settings show that windows users without admin privileges can create and apply locatin profiles.

If that fails, then do the following:

1. Export Locations registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Locations as a *.reg file.

2. Uninstall Access Connections and select the option to uninstall location profiles, too.

3. Reinstall Access Connections.

4. Create a dummy location profile.

5. Now view the profile in the registry key shown above. Copy the value shown in the m_szLocAccessData Reg_Binary entry of the location profile you created in step 3.

6. Paste that value into the same m_szLocAccessData Reg_Binary entry for each profile contained in the reg file exported in step 1.

7. Now import the reg file you saved after step 6 into the registry.

Reboot and all should be fine.

Thank you, IsoQuantic, for putting together that step-by-step list.
I was having the same problem, and your solution worked.

As it turns out, i didn't have to reboot after the registry edits, or delete the profiles. I just copied the data from the entry "m_szLocAccessData" of a dummy profile, then pasted that into the same entry in my existing profiles.

It did not restore all of the data in the profiles (e.g., my WEP keys), so I still had to re-enter some information. But I did not have to make up new profiles, which helped.

So, thanks!

IsoQuantic wrote:
4. Create a dummy location profile.

5. Now view the profile in the registry key shown above. Copy the value shown in the m_szLocAccessData Reg_Binary entry of the location profile you created in step 3.

6. Paste that value into the same m_szLocAccessData Reg_Binary entry for each profile contained in the reg file exported in step 1.

7. Now import the reg file you saved after step 6 into the registry.

Reboot and all should be fine.

Thanks for this HowTo.

I simplified it a bit for myself, as follows:

I had only one greyed out profile, and one working profile. Using regedt32 (I believe regedit cannot edit admin permissions?) I took a record (print screen) of the relevant section, and then simply edited the registry entry (above) of the broken profile to match the working one. Reboot the machine, to pick up the new registry. I could then edit/delete the broken profile.

I didn't bother this time, but really when editing the registry, you should make a backup first - export registry, or export just the section you are intending to change.

This worked for me - YMMV!

Thanks for the replies. I followed the other advice and simplified another level.

Go to the registry location HKLM\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Locations\<YOUR LOCATION OF INTEREST THAT'S LOCKED>

Go to the m_szLocAccessData

Edit the contents of this REG_BINARY and change it to the contents of another m_szLocAccessData that you can change. In my case the contents were

0000 B8 EF 36 ED 23 E2 A3 CC I6I#áat
0008 8D FC F5 52 F? 00 68 F6 .iiR--.hö
0010

No restart required. All editable now.

Giddy up

P.S. why won't this board accept a bluebottle email address at sign up?

Welcome to the forum.
Just wondering though if answering a six years old post is still useful...

jookieapc wrote:P.S. why won't this board accept a bluebottle email address at sign up?

For the very simple reason that bluebottle is home to way too many spammers!

Hi,

I just registered to reply to this thread.

No need to do the above steps and modification to registry.

It is very simple, follow these steps:

1- Lunch "Access Connections"
2- Switch to "Advanced"
3- Go to "Tools" tab
4- Go to "Global Settings"
5- Check "Allow Windows users without administrator privileges to create and apply location profiles"
6- Click OK

You will be able to create and apply profiles without any issues

Cheers

yasir wrote:..
No need to do the above steps and modification to registry...

These options are disabled if you do not have Administrator rights.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Welcome to the forum.
Just wondering though if answering a six years old post is still useful...

jookieapc wrote:P.S. why won't this board accept a bluebottle email address at sign up?

For the very simple reason that bluebottle is home to way too many spammers!

Thanks for the welcome, good to find a solution on two occasions now - I ended up finding it again when I was searching for resolution to the same issue.

Bluebottle is a paid service so I would have thought there'd be a lower proportion of spammers there than say gmail or hotmail. Just sayin