With many people adding a wireless network in their homes, it's not uncommon that your laptop or desktop will have multiple network adapters. For laptop owners, it's a must that you have both, a wireless and a regular network adapter so you can truly be mobile.
And although you don't need a physical adapter, some software, such as VMWare adds virtual network adapters during installation for virtual machine access.
After a while, your System Tray becomes full of little Network icons that are identified as Wireless Network Connection or Local Area Connection of which you can't make heads or tails of the connection that is actually the primary adapter is use.
Not very informative.
Instead, why not rename them to something that you can easily identify which connection is for home, work or when you are traveling?
Rename Network Connections In XP
To rename a connection on your XP computer, just right click on any Network icon in the System Tray and select Open Network Connections.
Another way to access your Network connections is to click on Start \ Run and enter ncpa.cpl in the run box.
You should see all your Network adapters either as icons or in a list as shown in the screen shot below.
To rename a connection, just right and select Rename . You can name the connections anything you want. Just name it so you can easily identify which connection is which, when you mouse over it in the System Tray.
Don't forget to rename the remaining Network connections.
Rename Network Connections In Vista
For Vista owners, renaming your Network connections is done exactly the same way as XP. The only difference is how you open the Network Connections window.
Just right click on any Network icon in the System tray and select Network and Sharing Center.
Then select Manage network connections in the left menu.
Or for quick access, you can access your Network connections by clicking on on Start and in the search box enter ncpa.cpl then click on it in the search results.
Follow the same steps as shown under the XP section above to rename your connections.
Once you are finished, identifing which connction is which, will be much easy by just mousing over the icon in the System tray.
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