Windows Vista and "Local Only" Access

I'm sure most of you have already heard how crappy Vista's wireless utility has been. Hopefully somebody has some solution.

Okay... here goes...



I'm an IT Tech for a housing department for a state university. One section of the apartments was not built for a hard wire connection so a wireless "solution" was implemented. We have a wireless bridge that streches across the buildings into several Cisco 1231 APs.

Here is where the fun begins.

Any student that uses Windows XP, OS X, or any OS other than Vista can receive DHCP no problem. When a student uses a Vista based OS (Basic to Ultimate) I will temporarily get DHCP and then is lost within a few minutes or at a reboot and the connections drops to "Local Only" Access. Keep in mind later on that they will get an IP address yet still have a "Local Only" connection.

At first I went through and did the basic ipconfig and netsh commands to disable autotuning and disabling IPV6. No Luck. I went through and disabled security features in the Firewall. I went into the APs and updated the software to the Latest IOS version and changed the ecryption from WEP (26 Hex) to WPA-Personal TKIP. No luck.

I then manaully set the IP Address, Subnetmask, and DNS Servers to what corresponded to the network. I connected and never went into "Local Only" at all. I reset it to obtain IP automatically and all I got was "Local Only" Access.

This has been going on for about a month....

Today, I was investigating seeing if I could ping anything within the Local Network. Not suprised, I was not able to ping the local gateway in "Local Only". I tried to ping another vista laptop on the same network connected through a hardwire connection and it all timed out.

Here's the interesting part. I then took the hardwire Vista Laptop and Pinged the local only wireless laptop... I got responses (less than 1ms) onto the wired laptop.

Since that happend I am so baffeled I called Microsoft and filed a "complaint" and that they would investigate this. I'm not having Microsoft charge me $245for their flaw in the OS and have some tech say "yeah you got a problem" and end the conversation there.

I've run all "hot fixes" changed registry keys, change battery performance levels and no luck.

The only thing that works is a static IP address but these are students that take their laptops to class and wouldn't be able to connect to the University's wireless and wouldn't know how to re-insert a static IP address.

Anybody got any insight?

I started getting the same thing when I got my Vista (business) laptop. At the office, I have a 3Com wireless access point. At home I have a Netgear WGR614v6.

When I get to the office, I have no trouble getting connected. But when I get home, my PC gets the same "Local" BS too. Normally...I put my computer in sleep mode between the office and home. But it doesn't matter if I turn it off, put it in sleep mode. I still have trouble at home.

Now here's the kicker. When I go out I have no trouble getting on anyother wifi connection. lol

The only solution I've found that works*, was to write a .bat command.


ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew


After that I just have to let my PC find the network and once its fails, I just hit my .bat file and within a few seconds (15sec tops).

Hope it helps.

If a release and renew solves the problem, I have to wonder how long the lease time on the network is, and if a fine tune would change things.