Windows: Controls on this property sheet are disabled because one or more other Network property sheets are already open ..

This article details how to fix the seemingly eternal windows error from XP onwards: “Controls on this property sheet are disabled because one or more other network property sheets are already open ..”

Controls on this property sheet are disabled

Scenario: You boot your PC and want to change your IP / DNS / other network setting and you get:

“The controls on this property sheet are disabled
because one or more other Network property sheets
are already open. To use thse controls, close all
these property sheets and then reopen this one.”

Except you don’t have other property sheets open. Reboot, no joy.

To be honest, I don’t know how this happened, the only change I think I made was to re-enable the bluetooth service on my laptop but who knows, maybe there was an auto-update.

Anyways, checking through my startup programs using startup.cpl by Mike Lin (a great utility) I found the following:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]   “NCInstallQueue”=”rundll32 netman.dll,ProcessQueue”

Delete the string value or untick it if you’re using the utility, reboot and you are now the master of your own network settings again.

Hope this helps!