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Fighting Network Level Awareness (NLA)

Fighting Network Level Awareness (NLA)

March 26, 2022·Tyler Rasmussen
Tyler Rasmussen

Many times I’ve had Windows decide that it could not determine its location and default to the Public profile, typically causing difficulties connecting via RDP or accessing a service running on the server.

Below are two ways you can manage this annoyance.

Restart the Network Level Awareness (NLA) Service

Sometimes the system will come up prior to being able to communicate on the network. If this occurs, it defaults to the Public profile. To correct the issue, simply restart the Network Level Awareness service for it to re-evaluate its surroundings and apply the correct profile.

  1. Open Services.msc.
  2. Locate and restart the Network Level Awareness service.

Force your Preferred Firewall Profile

Another option is manually specifying the profile you’d like applied. Open PowerShell and run the following commands.

ℹ️
Note, you cannot manually choose the Domain profile. It will only become the active firewall profile once NLA has communicated with a domain controller.

Run Get-NetConnectionProfile to list of all adapters and the current profile.

Get-NetConnectionProfile

Using the Interface Index output in the previous step we will change the adaptors profile.

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex [index #] -NetworkCategory [Public/Private]

Once applied, the new profile will take effect immediately.

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