win7 [FIXED] Can't view status of wireless network connection

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Solution: I navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network and renamed "Config" to "Config1". I simply right-clicked it and selected rename. The original "Config" entry is remade so you can just delete it and rename "Config1" to "Config". I found the solution here (in the comments section). You may need to copy and paste the link into your address bar in order to see the comment.

Many thanks to Wilhelmus for posting that link.

Problem: I can't view the status of my wireless network connection. I can connect to available wireless networks but once I'm connected, nothing shows up for "Connections: " in the Network and Sharing Center. Also, there's nothing listed in Network Connections. And finally, the network icon in the notification area of my taskbar has a red X on it (and it shows the icon for a wired connection).

The screenshots below show what it looks like when I'm connected to my 'Home' wireless network. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Anaron
Added solution.

[Roger H. Veteran]

I'd guess some VPN software or something injected something into the status thing - I see you have the Akamai thing there, i'm guessing you need that but what happens if you temporarily removed it.

Or another question - when did you notice the change?

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I'd guess some VPN software or something injected something into the status thing - I see you have the Akamai thing there, i'm guessing you need that but what happens if you temporarily removed it.

Or another question - when did you notice the change?

Thanks for the quick reply, SHoTTa35. I recently noticed the Akamai Net Session Interface and thought nothing of it. I just uninstalled it and rebooted but that didn't fix my problem. I noticed the problem itself today because I wanted to change my DNS settings. I did, however, notice last week that the network connection icon had a red X on it (which would indicate that it isn't connected). This tells me that the problem started at least a week ago or perhaps even earlier. I share my PC with my family so one of my younger brothers must have installed something. At the moment, nothing looks out of the ordinary in the installed programs list.

[c.grz]

Did you disable any services?

[Wilhelmus]

Try this:

The Case Of? Windows 7 Network Connections empty folder.

While the healthy system registry activity queried for NIC information in the registry, my faulty system was giving a BUFFER OVERFLOW result when quering for HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\Connections\ClassManagers value.

A simple look to this value seems fine, but when I edited it I just found that for some reason the faulty system had all 4 GUIDs ({B4C8DF59-D16F-4042-80B7-3557A254B7C5},{BA126AD3-2166-11D1-B1D0-00805FC1270E},{BA126AD5-2166-11D1-B1D0-00805FC1270E} and {BA126ADD-2166-11D1-B1D0-00805FC1270E}) in a single line, instead of in separate lines of this REG_MULTI_SZ value as it should be.

So just fixing the REG_MULTI_SZ value to a proper format and hitting refresh in ?Network Connections? dialog made network connection icons come back again!

It should look like this:

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Did you disable any services?

No.

Try this:

The Case Of? Windows 7 Network Connections empty folder.

It should look like this:

It's separated, just like yours.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network and renamed "Config" to "Config1". I simply right-clicked it and selected rename. The original "Config" entry is remade so you can just delete it and rename "Config1" to "Config". I found the solution here (in the comments section). You may need to copy and paste the link into your address bar in order to see the comment.

Thanks a lot, Wilhelmus. I don't think I would have found a solution if you hadn't posted that link.