Windows 7 won't identify network

Question

my Windows 7 machine has lost the ability to identify network connections and connect to the internet. both my LAN and WLAN connections to the router are affected. only thing I can think of happening is something occurring during my last iTunes update. any one else encountering this? I've been offline for days now. very frustrating.

Answer 1

Execute services.msc (Windows + R), and look for Wired AutoConfig and WLAN AutoConfig, check if they are in Automatic (also, check if they are started).

Answer 2

I feel your pain as I had the same problem few days ago where I tried numerous work arounds and fixes from the internet to solve this but to no luck. Windows 7 recognised my home wireless network as unidentified public and couldn't change it back to Public (once I was able to change it back to Home through leaving the home group but still did not work and upon restarting it was the same again). In the end I simply had to re-install windows 7 and works fine now (microsfot sigh).

While I was reading some of the threads in the internet I remember coming accross a message where a user had trouble with the Bonjour service where it messes up windows networking and un-installing Bonjour did help fix the problem to this particular user. Maybe you can attempt this and see if it solves your issue?

Some sites I had a look at while trying to fix my problem.

http://windows7news.com/forum/windows-7-troubleshooting/how-to-change-the-network-type/

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/878f7c4f-f287-4c75-a708-a2097f931435

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/4fd9d3e8-8b1b-4a55-9190-2a61410aff6a/

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/215-63-change-network-type

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dimeby8/archive/2009/06/10/change-unidentified-network-from-public-to-work-in-windows-7.aspx

Hope these will lead you to better fortunes. If you fix it let us know what you did incase any other user also has similar problem!