Windows 8 Rename Network

[Jim Doyle]

Guys I had a heck of a time with this problem and finally found what I consider the best solution to it.

There is a quirk in the Windows 8 OS that will force your connection to to take on the name of the WIRELESS SID if you have BOTH Ethernet and wireless NIC cards/functionality in your PC (most do now) and the Ethernet card is unable to take its private IP from your wireless/hard-wired router. In my case my PC arrived from the factory with its own Ethernet private IP with DNS active. That made it unable to get its initial private IP from my router over the wired LAN and it was then able to connect on the wireless side. That had the obtuse effect of naming that Ethernet connection to the channel name of the wireless channel it was connected (mine is dual band/channel) to even though it was also set up as a hard wired lan connection.

I read all the advise about hand regediting the network profile names - but that is NOT the way to fix this problem and it leaves one open to corrupting the registry if you fat finger in the wrong keys. Those profile come and go like spam every time a new wireless connection comes into range (people walking by or driving by in the parking lot etc.). I learned the proper way to do this from this bright guy named Dmitri (http://dmitrychernik...4#comment-78578). The big confusion comes from the fact that there are THREE different names associated with a connection and these names are given to different conceptual levels of a network connection: 1) HW Adapter Name; 2) Gateway Name and ; 3) Network Name. Most people are being advised to edit the adapter & profiles names via regedit but need or want to change the latter NETWORK name so that all their old non-wireless LAN hardwired PCs at home can connect to the network that contains both wireless and Ethernet HW lines. To me it was just too "irrational" to connect an Ethernet LAN PC hardwire to a connection network auto-named by Windows 8 as "Wireless2.4Ghz" (the name my network initially took when it set up the connection over a wireless router channel rather than over its Hardwired LAN cable).

A lot of people simply forget to set up the network permissions and defaults from the administrator tool and this where all these changes can be made.

The proper way to edit the connection name is to go into the administrator utility and set it up proper there. Go into a PowerShell and type "secpol.msc" (or click Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy). Once here you simply edit the name you want and also all the other defaults that general non-admin users (if any) can tinker with so there's at least an initial definition for all fields of the connection record.

From the same utility you can also change the icons and images used to depict your network that is now named to something more endearing to you.

Saved me hours of head scratching and very simple solution that requires no hand editing of the register.

Best of Luck

[ChriscomIT]

Hi there, same problem here and i found out the solution

 

Hit Winkey + R to open Run prompt and type gpedit.msc

Navigate to: Computer Configuration | Windows Settings | Security Setting | Network List Manager Policies

 

Choose your Network name from the right pane. Here you can change the NAME, if is PRIVATE or not, The ICON of the network and so on

Best trick! Thanks for the hint, very useful!