I’m looking help from the blogoshpere for a way to have XP only connect to my wireless access point.
I do not want the user to have the ability to see other available wireless networks and more importantly I don’t want them to have the ability to connect to wireless networks other than the one I configured XP with.
Scenerio: The computers are part of the management offices of apartment complexes. We will have 1 wireless router and 3-5 computers per location. Being that these are apartments, there are usually quite a few open access points within reach of the leasing office. And somehow my users are getting associated to these ‘other’ wireless networks. My biggest support issues right now are them calling up saying they cannot print anymore to a printer in the office and I find out they are connected to ‘linksys’ instead of the one they are suppose to be. I simply have them re-connect to the office WIFI and remove the rogue AP from the preferred list to get them back on their network.
For the record, the ‘Automatically connect to non-preferred networks’ is not checked.
What I’ve tried: If I stop the WZC service after the computer boots up, that prevents the ‘view available’ functionality, which is good and allows for continued use on their wireless network, but if I disable the service completely, wireless networking does not work at all upon reboot.
How can I make XP only work with just one access point?
Try the details at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0703.mspx which allows you to set this with group policy. If you don’t have group policy, I imagine you can do something similar with registry entries.
This was a great question and something I’m suprised hasn’t been documented in a broader manner as surely this is a security restriction corporates should use a lot.
Thanks for the comment Andy. I’m still researching a solution. Micrsoft so far has been of no help.