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| Disable Media Sense to recover lost connections |
| Broadband Internet access is generally reliable, but outages still occur. When they do, you might |
| experience a problem with your workstations no longer seeing your broadband router. |
| For example, let's say you use a cable broadband connection and your service goes offline for an |
| hour or so. When your service comes back up, your workstations can no longer access the Internet. |
| You could reboot the workstations to get them back on the Internet, but there's a much easier |
| solution: Disable Media Sense in Windows. |
| The Media Sense feature in Windows 2000 allows Windows to detect the link state of a network |
| connection. When Windows detects that the link state is down, Windows unbinds the protocols from |
| the adapter until it redetects an up state. This behavior can prevent Windows from gracefully |
| handling an Internet outage. By turning off Media Sense, you prevent Windows from unbinding |
| the protocols, and eliminate the need to reboot when the service comes back online. |
| Here's how to disable Media Sense in Windows 2000 Professional: |
| First, open the Registry Editor and open: |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters |
| Add a DWORD value named DisableDHCPMediaSense. |
| Set the value of DisableDHCPMediaSense to 1. |
| Close the Registry Editor and restart the computer. |
| Media Sense makes it possible for Windows 2000 computers to disconnect from one network and |
| detect new settings when you connect it to a different one. If you don't move your computer between |
| networks, disabling Media Sense can simplify your life when Internet outages occur. |
| If you do move your computer between networks, you might eventually need to set the value of |
| DisableDHCPMediaSense to 0 to re-enable the feature. |
| Reminder: Editing the registry can be risky, so be sure you have a verified backup before making |
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