Network profiles on Windows

Or rather, the lack of it.

I can’t understand why Microsoft has not provided Windows users with a network profiling tool that saves unique IP, Subnet, Gateway and DNS settings for individual network locations. My iPhone can do profiling and so can open source operating systems like Ubuntu. In theory, it should be a simple application to slap onto the operating system. I have experimented with third party tools and widgets which kind of work, but so far, I have found the tools often confuse novice users, as opposed to making things easier.

So I now present you my simple workaround which solves the problem of having to manually retype all your network settings each time you move your Windows notebook from your office to your home to your girlfriend’s home, etc.

Example 1 – for DHCP:

netsh interface ip set address name=”Wireless Network Connection” dhcp

netsh interface ip set dns name=”Wireless Network Connection” dhcp

netsh interface ip set wins name=”Wireless Network Connection” dhcp

Example 2 – for manual configuration of IP, Subnet, Gateway and DNS settings:

netsh interface ip set address “Wireless Network Connection” static 192.168.0.19 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1

netsh interface ip add dns “Wireless Network Connection” 202.75.129.101

netsh interface ip add dns “Wireless Network Connection” 202.75.129.102 index=2

Note: The configuration above is what I use for my home network. You would need to change it accordingly for how your network is configured.

What you need to do is copy and paste the above in Notepad, make the necessary changes to your settings, and then save it as a .cmd file type. You can create as many as you want, and save these .cmd files on your desktop. I simply name mine office.cmd and home.cmd .

To execute these files you must right click on the file and select “Run as administrator”, due to Microsoft’s User Account Control (UAC) security measure. Don’t worry about what that means. Just right click, Run as administrator and hit “Continue” when prompted. That’s all!

I hope this helps you save some time each day… I use it daily and it has certainly saved me a lot of time!