Who is my home network administrator?
Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom
here for askleo.com.
hoping to give you a little bit more confidence and a little less fear
when it comes to dealing with your technology.
This is frustrating.
I totally get this.
Every once in a while you'll see an error message that pops up and says you can't do
something, please contact your network administrator.
But you're at home, there is nobody to contact.
What's it all about?
Well, the bottom line is when it comes
to your system at home, you are the network administrator.
And I realize that's frustrating when it says to contact yourself.
The problem is that there is no simple
solution for most of the situations that result in this kind of an error message.
Networking, as I've mentioned many times
before, is excruciatingly, difficult and complex, way more so than it should be.
But it is what it is.
The bottom line is that depending on the situation you're encountering,
it could be as simple as a setting somewhere.
It could be a group policy editor,
it could be a registry setting, it could be something else entirely.
There's simply no way to know.
And that's one of the reasons that Windows
is pointing you to a quote unquote network administrator.
Because most of those settings are actually controlled in corporate
environments by an individual whose job it is to understand exactly those things.
And this, I think,
reveals one of the hidden secrets, the not so secret secrets.
To be honest about Microsoft Windows, it wasn't designed for you and me.
We're not the biggest customer.
Corporations are.
Large institutions are large institutions with hundreds or thousands of machines
that need to be managed by an It department.
And in that It department is in fact
a network administrator that controls that kind of stuff.
Why have a network administrator at home?
Honestly, it's simply a reflection
of the fact that there are not really two different versions of Windows.
Windows is windows.
Whether they call it Home and Pro or Enterprise.
Yeah, there's some features that come and go, but the underlying,
the underpinnings, the root of Windows itself is the same.
And that means that when something fails
in networking, it's going to ask for a network administrator.
And if that's you, I'm sorry.
The best thing I can suggest when you run
into this kind of a problem that's asking for a network administrator
is that you Google is that you go search for a solution.
Be as clear and as specific as you can be
when you're searching, use the complete error text.
Use the complete message that you were
given that includes this request for network administrator.
Because that's the kind of thing that will
hopefully lead you to the answer that you need.
It will require some research.
It will require some potentially frustrating work.
Again, there's not really a whole lot I
can tell you about that that would make it any easier.
Networking is complicated.
And this is one of the reasons
that Windows throws its own hands up and says, you know what?
You need a network administrator.
Hope that was helpful, at least in understanding why it's asking
for a network administrator when ultimately you don't have one.
For comments, for updates, for related links and more, visit AskLeo.com/4865.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
And this is Ask Leo.com. Thanks for watching.