SOLVED Win7 Unidentified Network error HALP!

[Turbo Tim]

My pc built in July worked fine until 2 nights ago.After a restart I suddenly lost internet. The pc can see the network, but identifies it as an unidentified network if that makes sense. Common problem I have seen all over the place- it worked, then it just doesn't, the fix is not so common from what I've seen.

After trawling and phone help for hours, I am interested to know can I default everything to do with win7 networking, or better still- delete everything to do with the networking components of w7 and then restore the original settings by reinstalling just these components? So far advice is to completely reinstall win7- I just can't believe that is the only option.

I can ping the pc from the router via a different pc on the network with no lost packets- suggests to me the network adapter is ok. If I unplug LAN I get the red cross, replace and it just comes up unidentified again. I can swap LAN to this pc and it works fine- it seems to me everything points to however w7 actually talks through the adapter to the network- interesting too, the mac address got reset to 00-00-00-00-00-00.
From elevated cmd I have used ipconfig /release-renew-netsh winsock reset-netsh int ip (c:\)resetlog.txt, removed and reinstalled network adapter and power cycled EVERYTHING in every possible combination of plugged in/out, on/off, first/second on and so on. Tried restore to the point it stopped working (windows updated a 'critical' update) and when that didn't work restored to a point of over 7 days ago, well before it worked ok. Every time- just says unid'd public network.
Heres a couple of screen shots to start:

Asus P8Z77-M, core i5 3450, 8gb 1333MHz cl9 RAM, Win7 64bit Home Premium, (Australian) iinet boblite modem router

 

[Turbo Tim]

Solved!

:beer:SOLVED!!!!!:beer:​

92 views and not one suggestion! Oh well, I will still tell you all how I solved this, you never know it may just help someone else out there. It took me 45 hours of trial and error, then a selection I had seen and ignored seems to have done the trick. And I have seen literally hundreds of people with same issue- many different fixes, but this was only thing that worked for me.

Open device manager, right click Network adapter with problem and choose properties.
Choose power management tab
For me- I ticked all 3 boxes, the one that made the difference I think is allow magic packets to wake on LAN

Others said untick the power management, but mine was unticked so I ticked it because:- Someone said by doing this he inadvertently re wrote whatever it was that was blocking the www connection. So my noobish thinking said maybe it will re write it no matter which way you go. It already had allow to turn off checked, I unchecked it. I couldn't choose the others then so I rechecked them all, and from there clicked the red cross on network and sharing centre to internet which started troubleshooter and within 30 seconds my internet was restored. To check I played PSY Oppan Gangnam Style and did the horse dance around the living room for the entire song. Sad. But fixed, so happy :beer: Hope this helps someone :ciao:

 

[TrainableMan]

I saw your post but didn't have an answer.

To be honest I don't believe anything in power management solved it for you either.

Often times drivers etc reload on reboot and may have fixed your issue.

A magic packet is a series of characters sent via network from another computer to "wake" this computer. So just checking that box would have no immediate effect whatsoever.

 

[Turbo Tim]

Cheers Train, I found this tucked away in a solution and blog page at answer 157/158. This pc was rebooted well over 50 times over that 45 hours, and had every single suggestion through out that entire blog applied. And tens of others, which all basically fell back on the same ideas around DHCP/fixed ip- resetting winsock, int ip, release/renew and so forth.

See post 157/158. I was about to reinstall windows myself, thank god I found this post first. That link again : http://pocketpccentral.net/blog/200...problem-resolved/comment-page-4/#comment-9912

To be honest I don't believe anything in power management solved it for you either.

Sorry to tell you- this is what fixed it whether you believe it or not. The suggestion was that something had corrupted in the area of the network adapter memory (supported by mac address reading as all 00's) or something to do with this in this guy's opinion, and that if nothing else worked, try this. He said he did it just to see(after 2 fresh windows installs!!!) and thinks maybe he inadvertently re wrote the bugged part of the adapter by doing it. I tried it, it worked for me. I agree with him because of how it worked out for me.

It did make sense for me too because I often logged off that pc and let it put itself to sleep, or just left it running and woke it with the wireless mouse. This caused other issues with programs I had running during these sleep/wake transitions.

So kudos to him, and hopefully this can fix someone else's problem one day. I honestly don't care if 999 people think this is not possible, if the 1000th person fixes their problems by doing this. I didn't post the fix because I understood it, I posted it because it worked...

PS. Info - It was not at a reboot- the pc had been on for 2-3 hours straight, I was pinging back and forth, looking for leads as to why that worked but the www did not. I applied these changes and www restored without a restart, no cmd screen open. This was the only thing I had open at that time.

 

[TrainableMan]

Well if anyone else finds this while looking for a solution it is easy enough to try.