Change network connection category using PowerShell

Note: This blogpost is also posted on my personal blog – https://itmicah.wordpress.com

 

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I recently came across an issue with PSRemoting to a Windows 7 XenDesktop VM. I discovered remoting was disabled on the remote system because one of the network connections was a Public connection (it was the PVS connection). To change this using PowerShell is quite easy in Windows 8 or higher: the Set-NetConnectionProfile command is available to do just that. However, in Windows 7 this is not so easy. Even though PowerShell 4 was installed, the command was absent. So I decided to create my own functions to facilitate this, based on this script by Microsoft: LINK. This script utilizes the Network List Manager to make the change. 

I created two functions named after the ones in Windows 8 and higher:

  • Get-NetConnectionProfile
  • Set-NetConnectionProfile

Here are some examples of how to use these (also included in the help):

# This will get the category for all network connections:
PS\> Get-NetConnectionProfile

IsConnectedToInternet : False
Category              : Public
Description           : Unknown network
Name                  : Unknown network
IsConnected           : True

IsConnectedToInternet : True
Category              : Domain
Description           : DOMAIN.LOCAL
Name                  : DOMAIN
IsConnected           : True

# This will get the category for all public network connections:
PS\> Get-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Public

IsConnectedToInternet : False
Category              : Public
Description           : Unknown network
Name                  : Unknown network
IsConnected           : True

# This sets the network category of the 'LAN1' connection to Private:
PS\> Set-NetConnectionProfile -Name 'LAN1' -NetworkCategory Private

IsConnectedToInternet : True
Category              : Private
Description           : LAN1
Name                  : LAN1
IsConnected           : True

# This sets the network category for all Public connections to Private
PS\> Get-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Public | Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Private

IsConnectedToInternet : False
Category              : Private
Description           : Unknown network
Name                  : Unknown network
IsConnected           : True

You can download or view the functions here: LINK

Hope it helps!

Michaja van der Zouwen