Hi all, this has been driving me crazy for a few weeks of on-and-off searching, I hope someone can answer this easily! We are about to roll out Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit to our organisation, but one of the stumbling blocks is that when users change networks (e.g. take their laptop home) they are prompted for a administrator password when they try and connect to their home network (i.e. set it to home in network location) - they CAN set it to Public, but I would like them to be able to set the network location without being prompted for admin credentials. We are not running a domain, so the group policy setting "Require domain users to elevate when setting a network’s location" does not help. I have made these changes local security policy network list manager policies unidentified networks "User permissions" > user can change location all networks network name > user can change name network location > user can change location network icon > user can change icon but that doesn't help with being prompted for admin password :( I found the word documents here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=ECEEFEB3-2C6B-43FD-BECB-ACAFFFDFCBAF&displaylang=en which describes Windows 7 network location, but under details about elevation all it describes for non-domain machines is "By default in Windows 7 on non-domain-joined computers, changing the network location requires administrative privileges. " Nothing about how to change this :(

Hi, Based on my understanding, change the network location is controlled by administrator, so when you perform this operation, it requires administrative privilege. Hope it helps. Alex ZhaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

That makes no sense - if that was the case, then machines that are part of a domain shouldn't be able to change network locations without admin credentials either, but they can. There is no extra security afforded to the machine and/or person because their laptop is part of a domain once they take it home, so why the different privilege options? Thanks for the response, but it wasn't quite what I was after :-)

Hi, This ability to change the location on domain-joined PCs without admin privileges was added to support the Homegroup scenario. An IT admin can lock this down via a GP policy, if set will require admin privileges to change network location. But, it isn’t possible to change the network location on non-domain-joined computers without admin privileges. Alex Zhao Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Alex, thanks for your reply, that's a pretty disappointing position to take (can I say of Microsoft?) I can't believe we're the only company out there not running a domain and running into this problem!!! It must be possible for MS to create a local security policy to unlock this behaviour, is there any way we/I can suggest they do that? Thanks, Dylan