Member Avatar for harindad

Hi,

I use my laptop to connect to different LANs. So, I always need to change
the LAN settings. Can anyone tell me how can I create several LAN connections so that I can simply enable/disable them. This is very easy in WinNT. But now I have Windows 2000 Professaional. So, please tell me how to do it in Windows 2000 Professional.

Thanks.
/Harinda

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Short answer and practical options for a laptop that moves between networks (thanks to for the clear problem; notes on earlier replies from and below):

You can’t get a Windows 2000 GUI that keeps separate “Local Area Connection” profiles for a single physical NIC the way you might want, but there are reliable, low-effort workarounds that give you the enable/disable or one-click switch behavior you need.

  1. Quick switch with netsh — create two small .BAT files (DHCP vs static) and run whichever you need. Example (run from an elevated command prompt; replace the adapter name and addresses):
netsh interface ip show config
netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.1.50 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1 1

This approach changes IP/DNS without rebooting. See Microsoft KB for netsh usage on Win2000. (support.microsoft.com)

  1. Create separate logical adapters (one icon per config) — install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, give each loopback/extra adapter its own static settings, and enable/disable the real adapter as needed. Install via Add Hardware -> Network adapters -> Microsoft Loopback Adapter, or use DevCon to script install/enable/disable. Example DevCon enable/disable pattern:
devcon find =net
devcon disable <HardwareID>
devcon enable <HardwareID>

This creates multiple “Local Area Connection” entries you can toggle; good when you want persistent per-location configs. See Microsoft loopback and DevCon docs. (learn.microsoft.com)

Notes & caveats: you can also add multiple IPs to a single NIC in Advanced TCP/IP (Add… in the IP Settings tab), but some services (gateway selection, NetBIOS/WINS/DNS registration) follow specific rules (gateway metric/which address registers first) and can behave unexpectedly on multihomed interfaces — so test before relying on that method in production. (flylib.com)

Recommendation: for fastest workflow, use simple netsh .BAT files (one per location) for day‑to‑day switching; use Loopback + DevCon if you prefer separate connection objects that you can enable/disable without manually editing addresses.

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Member Avatar for MartyMcFly

To my knowledge it is not possible to set two different IP addresses on one Operating system.

My advice is to create different user account thats connects to different Workgroups or domains, as appropriate.

I hope this is correct advice, and will eat several hats if someone says that you can set a multitude of LAN connections in Network Connections, therefore any change to IP settings will have to be made each time imho.

Member Avatar for harindad

Thanks for the advice.
But that won't work. Because, I go to different few different locations and need to login using the same account. And always, need to change the LAN settings rather than simply enable/dissable Local Area Connections :-(.

But I really wonder why it is not possible in Win2000 Professional. Because, it was possible in WinNT.

Member Avatar for DMR

1. You can bind more than one IP to a NIC and specify multiple gateway IPs in the card's advanced TCP/IP settings, although I'm not sure that's going to give you the exact functionality you're looking for.

2. Although it seems to be a bit of a kluge, I think you can set up different NIC configurations under different Hardware Profiles and then select which profile to boot into each time you fire up the computer.

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