The problem was that switching to a public wireless network (fas.harvard.edu or cmu.edu) would change a winXP registry entry preventing my private home network from connecting automatically. Restarting works, but much too annoying.
UPDATE: This can also be fixed by broadcasting/announcing NetBIOS on the router side which my new DLink can now do, much easier.
The registry path is:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters
The key is:
DhcpNodeType
The value is switched to a value other than 8, while I need a value of 8 for my home wireless network. I created a batch file that I run before connecting to my home network, or you can run regedit and manually change the value of the key to 8 but that becomes cumbersome quickly.
The contents of the batch file is this single line:
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters" /v DhcpNodeType /t reg_dword /d 8 /f
Posted by Mike at September 13, 2007 10:40 PM