How to change public network to private

My wife's laptop jumped into public network mode yesterday for no known reason.

I remember that it happened to my desktop last year, and I found instructions online showing how to change it back.

So yesterday we searched online and she found the secpol.msc method.
I rejected that solution because I "knew" that the policy editors are only available on the Windows Pro editions, and we have Windows Home.

Oh wait! I was wrong. Her laptop has Pro. S'good. So we did the secpol thing and it's fixed.

But back to my desktop ... which really is Windows Home. No secpol is available.
So how the heck did I change it back from public to private last year? I cannot remember.
Even if I remembered ... it might be moot because MS is always changing the settings panel with every new release.

So ... after that long-winded tale ... how do I change public to private on Windows 10 Home 1803 ?

That was the first solution we found online ...

Bree said:

There's a tutorial on that....
Set Network Location to Private or Public in Windows 10

But it doesn't work here.

At this point in your instructions ... I click on the network icon (yours says Brink, mine says GFIBER239) ...


... and I get this:

There is no Make this PC discoverable slider.
There are no public/private buttons.
If it helps ... winver says I'm running version 1803 (build 17134.228)

This solution worked for me ...

lolnothankyou said:

Here is another interesting article:Add Network Location Type Context Menu in Windows 10

I'd prefer not to leave my context menu cluttered with the extra menu entry.
Is there a way to turn that into a command-line script? One script for public. One script for private.

I'd prefer not to leave my context menu cluttered with the extra menu entry.
Is there a way to turn that into a command-line script? One script for public. One script for private.

There was link on that page to use PowerShell - Change network location type with PowerShell in Windows 10

I found a way to do that with bash ...

Code:

# netpub / netpri - Change network type to public or private

Base=$(basename "$0")

case "$Base" in
  netpub) type="public";;
  netpri) type="private";;
       *) exit 1;;
esac

case "$type" in
   public) PowerShell -windowstyle hidden -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -ArgumentList '\$net = get-netconnectionprofile;Set-NetConnectionProfile -Name \$net.Name -NetworkCategory Public' -Verb RunAs"
           echo "network set to public";;
  private) PowerShell -windowstyle hidden -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -ArgumentList '\$net = get-netconnectionprofile;Set-NetConnectionProfile -Name \$net.Name -NetworkCategory Private' -Verb RunAs"
           echo "network set to private";;
esac

exit 0

Eagle51 said:

There was link on that page to use PowerShell - Change network location type with PowerShell in Windows 10

A simpler way to set all private with powershell (no need to enter specific names)

Code:

$NetConnectionProfiles = Get-NetConnectionProfile  | Where-Object {$_.NetworkCategory -eq 'Public'}
ForEach ($NetConnectionProfile in $NetConnectionProfiles) {
	Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Private
}