Hi, We are using a non-domain network with around 500 client machines running Windows 7 Enterprise. We recently replaced our gateway server with another product and another virtual server but it remains on the same IP. Client machines are prompting users to "Select Network Location: Home, Work, Public". How does Windows 7 know that the gateway has changed? What can I do to make the replacement transparent for users? (Presently some users are selecting "public" which blocks many of our network services and is causing major headaches). Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Trashman99 wrote: Hi, We are using a non-domain network with around 500 client machines running Windows 7 Enterprise. We recently replaced our gateway server with another product and another virtual server but it remains on the same IP. Client machines are prompting users to "Select Network Location: Home, Work, Public". How does Windows 7 know that the gateway has changed? What can I do to make the replacement transparent for users? (Presently some users are selecting "public" which blocks many of our network services and is causing major headaches).   Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Yes Win7 traces changes to gateways, DNS servers and DHCP servers and their settings. So if Win7 detects changes it thinks, this is a new network and asks the user to select a new network location - if you allow this. But you can define local GPOs, which disable the user's possibility to change the location and which automatically set newly detected networks to a predefined network location. Of course you will need some means to put this settings to all 500 PCs. Wolfgang

Turns out that the network detection works based on the MAC Address of the gateway, independant of the IP. When changing our gateway we needed to take note of the old MAC and change the MAC on the new server to match before hooking it up. You can do this in Windows 7 and probably Server 2008 as follows (Other windows versions are similar): Network Connections (Change adaptor settings) Local Area Connection -> Properties [ Configure ] Button Advanced tab Locally Administered Address Specify the MAC you want to use and hit OK. When the clients initialise their network connections next time they will detect the new server as the old network location automatically. Some NICs apparently do not have the Locally Administered Address under Advanced tab. If this is the case your NIC does not support spoofing the MAC address in this way, although most brand name NICs and even VMWare NICs in virtual machines do. If this is the case there might be a possibility of changing the the MAC in the Windows registry - google "MAC Spoof Windows".

Turns out that the network detection works based on the MAC Address of the gateway, independant of the IP. When changing our gateway we needed to take note of the old MAC and change the MAC on the new server to match before hooking it up. You can do this in Windows 7 and probably Server 2008 as follows (Other windows versions are similar): Network Connections (Change adaptor settings in Win 7) Local Area Connection -> Properties [ Configure ] Button Advanced tab Locally Administered Address Specify the MAC you want to use and hit OK. When the clients initialise their network connections next time they will detect the new server as the old network location automatically. Some NICs apparently do not have the Locally Administered Address under Advanced tab. If this is the case your NIC does not support spoofing the MAC address in this way, although most brand name NICs and even VMWare NICs in virtual machines do. If this is the case there might be a possibility of changing the the MAC in the Windows registry - google "MAC Spoof Windows".