Service, Protocol, and Adapter Lists Can Appear Blank in NCPA (130680)

CAUSE

A new registry key has been added under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE, and the user currently logged on does not have read rights to this key.

When the Network Control Panel tool starts up, it scans HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE for "Manufacturer" keys (for example, Microsoft). It then looks at registry keys under each Manufacturer key for "Product" keys (for example, Tcpip). Once it has found a product key it looks for a version key (for example, CurrentVersion) and then a key called NetRules. If it finds a key called NetRules it assumes that this subkey is defining a network component that it needs to be able to configure.

However, NCPA assumes that it has read rights to all Manufacturer and Product keys. If it gets an access denied error at any time while scanning these keys it terminates the scanning process and just uses the information it has already procured. This means that if a third party adds a key under SOFTWARE that is alphabetically before 'Microsoft,' and it has restricted rights applied to it, then NCPA is never able to retrieve the list of Network components from the registry and presents a blank list.