Richard Siddaway's Blog

Network Connection Ids

Yesterday I was looking at changing a Network connection id (the name that shows in Network and Sharing Center when you look at the adapters). I kept getting an error – either COM or number of arguments depending if I was running locally or remotely.

I eventually realised that I must be using a connection id that already existed in the Registry.  I tracked them down to

HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

This works for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. Please check for other Windows versions.

This produces a bunch of subkeys of the form

{F913D3B9-DBE4-455C-8926-10E24AB4E68A}

Each of these has a subkey Connection with a value of Name that we are interested in

function get-Registryconnectionid{             
[CmdletBinding()]             
param (             
   [string]$computer="."             
)             
BEGIN{}#begin             
PROCESS{            
            
Write-Verbose "Reading registry keys for IDs"            
$HKLM = 2147483650            
$key = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"            
$reg = [wmiclass]'\\.\root\default:StdRegprov'            
$subkeys = $reg.EnumKey($HKLM, $key)            
            
            
foreach ($name in $subkeys.snames){            
  if ($name -eq "Descriptions"){Continue}            
  $conkey = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\$name\Connection"            
  Write-Debug $conkey            
              
  $cvalue = "Name"            
  $id = $reg.GetStringValue($HKLM, $conkey, $cvalue)  ## REG_SZ            
              
  $ivalue = "DefaultNameIndex"            
  $index = $reg.GetDwordValue($HKLM, $conkey, $ivalue)  ## REG_DWORD            
  $connection = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{            
       Index = $index.uValue            
       Connection = $id.sValue            
    }            
  $connection              
}            
            
            
}#process             
END{}#end            
            
<# 
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves network connection ids 

.DESCRIPTION
Retrieves network connection ids held in the registry.
This includes current and previous ids.

.PARAMETER  Computer
Computer name

.EXAMPLE
get-Registryconnectionid

.EXAMPLE
get-Registryconnectionid -computer server02

#>            
            
}

This uses the standard WMI methods to read a local or remote registry

The corresponding current values are given by

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter | select NetConnectionId, Index

The two index values are not related