START CONTROL PANEL HOW TO
START CONTROL PANEL WINDOWS 8.1
START CONTROL PANEL WINDOWS 8

Next to Connections, you can click on the name of the WiFi or Ethernet network to bring up the status info dialog for the current connection. I talk more about it in the Advanced Sharing Settings section below. A HomeGroup allows you to easily share files, printers and more between computers. Next to HomeGroup, you’ll see a link that says Available to join or Ready to create depending on whether a HomeGroup already exists on the network or not. To the right of the network name and network type, you’ll see HomeGroup and Connections. So what exactly does switching do? Well, you can see all of the different sharing settings when you click on the Change advanced sharing settings link, which I explain in detail in the next section below.

START CONTROL PANEL HOW TO

You can read my post on how to switch between public and private for the currently connected network. Change the network type to Public and no one will be able to discover your computer on the network.

This can be useful, for example, if you are visiting someone and you want to make sure no one can access any data on your computer while you are connected to their network. You can also manually change the network type to Public or Private depending on what kind of privacy you want. If you choose no, it will make the network public. Sometimes, Windows will ask you if you want to enable sharing or find devices once you connect to a network and if you say yes, it will make the network private. Windows will normally try to figure this out for you automatically so that when you connect to a public WiFi network, it will use the Public profile and not the private one. This means others can find your computer on the network, possibly access shared folders, stream media from your computer, etc. This is very important because when you are connected to a private or home network, there are a lot of sharing settings that are set by default to be trusting. In the above examples, one has Home network listed and the other has Private network listed. The first thing to understand about this info is the network type, which is listed directly below the name of the network.

START CONTROL PANEL WINDOWS 8

In Windows 8 and Windows 10, they cleaned up the interface by getting rid of a couple of items and combining other items.Īt the top, you’ll see the active network or networks, the network type, the type of access, HomeGroup info and the connection info. Windows 7 has a little bit more information and also a couple of more options. The first thing you’ll see when you open the Network and Sharing Center is your current connection to the network and to the Internet. If you are in icon view, just click directly on Network and Sharing Center. In the Control Panel, you can click on the Network and Internet category and then click on Network and Sharing Center.

START CONTROL PANEL WINDOWS 8.1

In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, just right-click on the Start Menu and choose Control Panel from the list. In Windows 7, just click on Start and the Control Panel is listed on the right side of the Start Menu. In all versions of Windows, the app is located in the Control Panel. This will instantly bring up the app in the list. The quickest way to get to it is by clicking on Start and typing in network and.

The first step is to open the Network and Sharing Center.

Start control panel