Manage Your Network Connections in Vista's Network and Sharing Center

Manage Your Network Connections in Vista's Network and Sharing Center
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The Network and Sharing Center offers a single place for managing your entire network, including the PCs connected to it, network connections, sharing options, and more. You can read more about this in my article Vista’s Network and Sharing Center – Configuration Tools. One of the options available in the Tasks pane is Manage Network Connections. [See Image 1].

Clicking Manage Network Connections opens the Network Connections window. There, you can view all of the available and/or configured connections, right-click them, and perform network-connection-related tasks.

By right-clicking you can access the following [See Image 2]:

Disable – Click this to disable the device. If you are connected to a network through this device, you’ll be disconnected

Diagnose – Use this to start the Windows Network Diagnostics wizard.

Rename – Click this to rename a connection. View status of this connection. This launches the connection Status window, which was previously described.

Properties – Click this to change the settings of the connection. You probably won’t need to be here very often, if at all.

To manage your home office network connections:

1. Click Start, click Network.

2. Click Network and Sharing Center.

3. Click Manage network connections.

4. Right-click the connection you want to manage.

6. Click Disable to disable the connection. This does not delete the connection.

7. Click Status to see the status of the connection. You can view activity and bytes sent and received, among other things.

8. Click Diagnose to find and resolve problems with the connection.

9. Click Create Shortcut to create a shortcut for the connection.

10. Click Properties to see the properties for the connection.

The Network and Sharing Center offers a single place for managing your entire network, including the PCs connected to it, network connections, sharing options, and more. You can read more about this in my article Vista’s Network and Sharing Center – Configuration Tools.

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