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When I connect my Windows 7 Pro laptop to my corporate network it recognizes the wired network connection and then shows it's connected to corp.company.com domain but still says "Identifying..." for 60-90 seconds longer. Only after it's done do I get a working network connection. With my previous Windows XP laptop I don't remember ever having to wait for a network connection on the same corporate network.

With my home wireless network the Windows 7 laptop connects and gets an active/ready network connection much faster--after only a second or two.

So what exactly is Windows doing when it says "Identifying"? What can I look into to speed this process up? Do others regularly see long delays at this step?

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    It's the little Bill Gates mini-me running in the background and trying to see what vulnerabilities it can open while you wait for that dumb blue circle to go away. Sep 1, 2010 at 5:51

6 Answers 6

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It's a feature of Windows 7 called "Network Awareness."

Part of that feature is something called "NCSI" - which is described here. NCSI causes your system to fetch a webpage from msftncsi.com and also verify the address returned by a DNS lookup from that domain name. That consumes some time. That same webpage describes how to turn it off.

I have disabled it on a system of mine; it displays a continuous warning triangle on the system tray network icon, but otherwise works normally.

Windows Vista/7 also have a new protocol installed by default (in addition to TCP/IP and TCP/IP v6) called "Link Layer Topology Discovery" - it's used to draw the network map in the Network Connections control panel. I'm not entirely sure but I believe Vista/7 tries to make an LLTD discovery broadcast or query and waits for a reply. You can try disabling the LLTD protocols on your network adapter and see if that increases connection speed.

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Since its a corporate laptop I'm going to assume that it may be connected to a domain at your workplace. My guess is that it's trying to connect to that domain.

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Radius Authentication (username and password).

ARP Resolution of network layer addresses into link layer addresses.

DHCP Requesting and getting an IP address.

Access rules Your client may be required to pass certain tests before it's allowed onto the network. For instance, a machine that can't provide proof that it has the most recent virus definitions might be given access only to the server that has all the AV updates on it.

  1. You could install Wireshark to watch the packets to see what your machine's doing during the time the message is displayed.
  2. You could just ask your network administrator what's going on. If it's a Windows bug, s/he may have a patch for you.
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You're possibly experiencing this bug: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

When Windows says it's "Identifying network", it's trying to find a DHCP server and negotiate with it.

*edit*
Try the solution in the second to last comment on this page (dead link as of 2016-03-11) if the Microsoft Support page didn't help.
It suggests an alternative fix for a similar or the same problem.

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    Thank you for the links. I should have mentioned but I found both of these pages when searching earlier and neither solves the delay in "Identifying..." the network connection, including Neil's comments about shutting off the firewall. In the problems statement for those pages they're referring to the complete inability to connect whereas I'm referring simply to a delay in establishing a connection. Thanks.
    – Sam
    Jul 30, 2010 at 17:40
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    MS article does not apply to WIN7; only VISTA. 2nd link is rotted.
    – whitey04
    Jan 20, 2015 at 5:57
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In case this might help others, If you are experiencing long network identifying times then try disabling the "Register this connection's address in the DNS" setting. And then disable and enable the network adapter to see if it's still slow ( no computer restart necessary ).

This worked for me when many other suggestions failed. Note: there are many causes to this issue.

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Dont worry please follow the below steps to reslve the same.

1) go to device manager 2) Right click on device manager and scan for hardware changes. 3) Uninstaller the current driver 4) install the latest driver.

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  • This does not attempt to answer the original question
    – Burgi
    Mar 11, 2016 at 9:58

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