Windows 10: Network Location Changing on Domained and undomained machines randomly

Hello,
What is going on with Windows 10 and Netowork locations? I work in an enterprise environment and have computers that are domained and some that are not. About 3 or 4 machines out of the 30 or so that run Windows 10 have weird network location issues. There is one machine that is not on the domain running WinX Education 64bit and every time the only local user profile on the machine logs in it sets both Ethernet connections as Public. One ethernet on that machine is to the network and is DHCP and the other is to a piece of DAQ equipment with a static address. I have the set-netconnectionprofile... powershell command in a batch running off task scheduler, but takes time in startup to run the script, so file share and net discovery are active. I know the work around, but what is the problem? I also had a machine that is on the domain show up as a public net location after login. It showed the connection to the domain, but net location was public. I don't have any Group Policy rules pertaining to net locations as it has not been an issue until winX started making it's rounds. I have over 100 machines on this floor and 6 VLANs, so I see a decent cross section of issues, but I cannot find any information other than workarounds or how to's on setting the net location. I want the root of the problem. Anyone?

Thanks in advance!

:)

 

Set Time Automatically Option Grayed Out

I have been working with computers and servers for over 30 years. When I first started working with personal computers, workstations were running DOS and Windows 3.1. This is even prior to the Windows NT era. Even during the Windows NT era, you were able
to change the date and time on a workstation even if it was joined to a domain and it would stay changed.

Now I must disagree about the NLA (Network Location Awareness) service. It has nothing to do with enabling or disabling the "Set time automatically" option which is greyed out anytime you join a Windows 10 machine to a domain. Just to be sure, I even
proved this by disabling the NLA service and going back to the Date & time settings which are still greyed out.

What I have learned is that the Windows Time (W32Time) service is directly related to maintaining date and type synchronization on all clients and servers in the network. If this service is stopped, date and time synchronization will be unavailable. If
this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.

And yes, I know that you can change the date/time in the "legacy" control panel with the necessary permissions, but if you do not disable the Windows Time service, the computer will automatically change the time back to the "time authority" which is your
domain controller.

Now, if you change the time on the domain controller before changing the time on the Windows 10 machine to match the changed date and time. The Windows 10 machine will accept this change as long as the discrepancy between the real date and time is not greater
than a few hours. If it is, the Windows 10 machine will update its time from the internet. This has been proven by extensive testing.

Now the whole reason I created this thread in the first place is...

Before a Windows 10 machine is joined to the domain, the "Set time automatically" slider is not disabled and a user can turn this on or off. The same goes for the "Change" button directly under "Change date and time" on the same settings page.

Once you join that same Windows 10 machine to a domain, those settings are disabled (greyed out) and the text stating "*Some settings are hidden or managed by your organization." is disabled at the top of the Date & time settings page.

Since I am the "organization" that is talked about and have full rights to the domain controllers and servers, I want to know how I change and make available these settings and make them not hidden.

So, I was really trying to find out what changes are done on the Windows 10 machine to make these settings hidden or unavailable to users after the machine is joined to the domain.

 

Network locations in Windows 10 randomly changing

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for the delay in response.

Please refer the following article and check if that helps.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/fix-network-connection-issues

Hope this helps. If the issue remains unresolved, please get back to us and we would be happy to help.

 

Ok, I dug further and found my own answer. The issue is in a service called Network Location Awareness. What can happen on login or config change of a connection is that NLA will check and reset the location to public if it unsure what kind of network it is connected to. Public network location setting will cut off Network discovery, fileshare and locks down the firewall. Anyways what can happen is upon login if your domain controller or another server is slow to respond to the location inquiry from NLA it will automatically go into a Public location and lock down everything making you either reset the location with powershell or unjoin and rejoin the domain. ANNOYING!
HOW TO FIX
Push windows key + r
type services.msc press enter
scroll down to Network Location Awareness in the list on the right hand side and double click
In the dialogue box you should see a drop down menu set to Automatic
Click that drop down and set it to Automatic Delayed or Manual and click apply then exit out of services.