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How to stop the Network Connections pop-up

The Network Connections pop-up, asking the user to 'Choose a network connection' appear when when misspelling a domain name in Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft Windows offers a feature that pops up the network connections dialog when a network connection is not available. This is convenient when using a dial-up modem to access the Internet. However, this feature can pretty annoying in some scenarios:

I have a broadband internet connection when working from home and sometimes - when using my laptop at friend's place - I have to use a traditional dial-up connection. When accessing the Internet through the broadband connection and visiting a web page containing an image where the web page author has misspelled the domain name in the image link will result in the operating system popping up the network connection dialog asking if I would like to use the dial-up connection. The same thing will happen if you misspell a domain name in the browser's address bar. This is clearly unwanted. I do not want to use the dial-up connection because of a misspelled domain name.

Another similar scenario where the network connection pop-up may appear is when working on a broadband connection and there's a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection configured on the machine. The pop-up will appear when trying to access a misspelled domain name.

Disable the 'Choose a network connection' pop-up

The 'Never dial a connection' setting is available in Internet Explorer's options dialog.

Follow the instructions below to disable the network connections pop-up:

  1. Start Internet Explorer
  2. In the Tools menu, click "Internet Options..."
  3. Select the Connections tab
  4. Check 'Never dial a connection"
  5. Press OK

Alternative method:

  1. Start the Windows Control Panel
  2. Double-click Internet Options
  3. Select the Connections tab
  4. Check 'Never dial a connection"
  5. Press OK

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Mark Hahn writes

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