Hello, maybe someone can help with this. I have read the many postings on "Access: local only" and the only one that comes close to my problem is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947041/en-usBut that article implies that the problem will resolve itself after some amount of network traffic: but not for me; once in this state, it persists for days.[Note: I have two network devices, but the wired net is not connected; so maybe the above does not apply?] I'm running Vista Home Premium on Dell Studio laptop, all updates, Wifi, not FIOS, the network works!The Network Location Awareness service (NLA) reports "Access: Local only",which means that applications that believe NLA stop working. [eg: Google Sidebar][but the internet *is* accessible] The problem persists across /release, restarting Wifi, and even changing Wifi hotspots.[so this is not a problem with DHCP, DNS, or other such]I have tried stopping and restarting NLA (and NLS with it), but to no effect. If I reboot, NLA resets, and things work again; but that is a high price to pay.The problem may begin after coming out of hibernate or sleep.(so doing a reboot would completely defeat the purpose of sleep/hibernate, eh?) Is there a way to reset NLA without rebooting? or to avoid getting into this state?[Other than never hibernate/sleep, because eventually the battery drops and Vista sleeps itself anyway...][staying in high-power mode seems to help, but i have not dont controlled experiments]

Hi, Thank you for posting. Generally, the symptom of the connection shows Access: Local only is related to the feature NCSI of Vista; I would share the following related information with you: Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) is a new Windows Vista feature. It is designed to be responsive to network conditions, so it examines the connectivity of a network in a variety of ways. One test failed, NCSI may report a error, even if the networking actually can be accessed fully. For example, NCSI tests connectivity by trying to connect to http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt, a simple Website that exists only to support the functionality of NCSI. Please try to visit the following website, you should see Microsoft NCSI. http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt For more information about NCSI, please refer to the following document: Appendix K: Network Connectivity Status Indicator and Resulting Internet Communication in Windows Vista http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766017.aspx Regarding our issue, the computer may be have difficulties on accessing the http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt due to the specific network environment and settings. Thus, it may show local access only, but the Internet connection works. Since the network connection works fine, we can simply ignore the issue. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT

Hi.It seems to me this has to do with the widely experienced problem where the network connection in VISTA is set to"(unauthenticated)" even though the computer is connected to the domain and should be displaying "domain network" instead.We have had problems with this since about a month back, when we started migrating most of our desktops to VISTA (Windows Server 2003 domain).We have tried to solve the problem in numerous ways, for example:- Disabling and enabling the adapter- Removing unnecessary profiles from the network card- Removing the computer from the domain and rejoining- Running GPupdate /force from the command line- Simply rebooting the workstation- Physically removing and reinstalling the network cable from the computer- Using the "Repair" command in network adapters- Reinstalling the network card (also removing hidden network cards)- Updating the network card drivers- Logging on with different accounts (domain admin and normal user)- Numerous other things I can think of...The craziest thing is that any of the above measures sometimes work and sometimes don't....Our workstations are standard HP XW4400 and XW4600 workstations running VistaX64 Business. All are mostly configured exactly the same, however some are displaying this problem and others are not.As we know this is a widespread problem that Microsoft does not give any specific advice on (Google search) we seriously believe it should be addressed as soon as possible.Just saying "No worries, the network will work anyway" is simply unacceptable.One thing that is seriously impacted for example is network printers.A user with this problem can not install a shared network connected printer, without unnecessarily rambling thru drivers. After all, the reason you have printservers is, that you have all the drivers (x86 and x64) already installed on them, so that users simply click to add network printers. This will not work with the workstation NIC in"(unauthenticated)" -mode.Any serious help and suggestions would be welcome...- Tommy