I have a user with a Laptop that has XP home on it. The user needs several VPN sessions. But for one of them a static outside address is needed. This user is not very network savvy so I was hoping to come up with a very easy method for her to switch between a preconfigured Static IP and the DHCP. Like a profile switch or possibly two seperate icons on her desktop that she can click.
Your advice would be appreciated.
Mike
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In the network connections (start, run ncpa.cpl) you can just right click the connections that the user will need to enable/disable and click on create shotcut. The shortcut will be on the desktop now you can rename each of the shortcuts appropriately. For example "home network" "office network" or whatever you think is easiest. All the user has to do now is right click and either enable or disable that connection. (tip once a connection is disabled a double click will enable it) I hope you find this useful, goodluck !
This is close, this is similar to what I'm looking for, but I need some more info. How do I setup multiple Network Connections for the same NIC? IE as I understand your answer, I would need one Network Connection for the Static IP and another one for the DHCP. Then create the shortcuts to her desktop and rename them accordingly. But I don't know how to setup multiple network connections for the same NIC.
Well I couldn't tell from your first post that you were trying to do this on the same nic. I thought you had the network part set up already and wanted an easy way for the "not very network savvy" user to switch between networks. The way I described above would be the easiest when there are two nics in the system. For one nic there is an alternate tab in the tcp/ip properties for another ip range but as for finding an easy way for the user I would say either that user has to be educated at least on switching ip addresses or install another nic and create the shortcuts I mentioned in my last post. Unless someone else has easier/better idea I'm at a loss. Good Luck with your project.
Wouldn't setting up hardware profiles that the user chooses the needed profile when the computer boots up solve this problem? I'm not sure, this is just a suggestion that I believe should work.
Thanks for the suggestion Sue. I tried working with the hardware profiles, but for whatever reason they don't cover IP changes. When I changed the IP it would change on both profiles. Thank you though for your help.
You can create simple batch files for the user to run. Use the "netsh" command as shown in this MS article. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=257748 You can put shortcuts on his/her desktop that are named accordingly depending on the location.
Create a plain text file in notepad, typing the command as you would enter it in the command prompt. Rename the file with the extension .bat.
for static... example...
netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.0.10 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1
ip, subnetmask, gateway, and metric represent the last three
for dhcp... use...
netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp
* The netsh command is very valuable, but is not very well documented. I use it for the winsock fix in 2k and XP... netsh winsock reset
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Switch IP Profiles?
Your advice would be appreciated.
Mike