Change MAC address in Windows 7 or 8 in a few steps.
I recently ran into the problem in where I need to remotely access a computer to get some work done. Most places that allow remote access to work computers employ numerous safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. One of the safe guards that many places employ to secure their networks is MAC address filtering. This prevents people without the correct MAC address from being able to successfully login.Changing your MAC address:
The problem today was that the computer network I needed to access only allows us to choose a single device’s MAC address to access the network with. I did not have that computer with me, but needed to access the network. What was I to do? I changed my MAC address and I could access the network without a hitch.
*Please check with the company who’s network you are accessing. Subverting protection schemes could be against their computer usage policy or worse been seen as unauthorized access!
What is a MAC address?
From WIKIPEDIA “A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network technologies and most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet.”
find your mac id:open cmd.exe ,for that press window key+R to open Run,then type cmd and press enter.on cmd type: ipconfig/all
changing MAC Address.
1) Click the start button and open ‘Control Panel’ (Windows 8 just search for Control Panel)
2) Click the ‘Network and Internet’ option then ‘Network and Sharing Center’
3) On the left hand side of the screen click ‘Change adapter settings’.
4) This should bring you to your network devices, right click the device you access the internet with and select ‘Properties’. or me it was ‘Local Area Connection’.
5) Click the ‘Configure’ button, then click the ‘Advanced’ tab on the top.
6) Lastly, scroll down and select ‘Locally Administered Address‘ (Some people have reported as having to change ‘Physical Address’ instead. Click whichever one you have.)
7) Now you should see to the right two options: ‘Not Present’ (Selected by default) and ‘Value’. Select ‘Value’ and enter the new MAC address you want to use (Just the address, no special characters or spaces) and click ‘OK’. You will be disconnected from the internet, but when you reconnect you will be using your new MAC address.
That’s it!
This will also work if you are trying to connect to your wireless network from a friends computer, but you have set MAC address filtering on so strangers cannot connect.
Security Note:
MAC address filtering alone is not a secure method of protecting your data. This is but one cog in the wheel of security techniques. MAC addresses can easily be changed and spoofed so having just this preventing people from accessing your network is foolish at best, as they would be able to test all possible addresses until they successfully could access the network.
However, MAC address filtering in combination with other techniques is an effective way of slowing down potential attackers. An attacker would need to know a valid login name, password and MAC address at minimum. If your login prompt did not let the attacker know if it was the login, password or MAC address that was wrong and you had a strong login/password combination with MAC address filtering it could take years for them to crack.
Secondly, MAC address filtering is actually really pointless when using it to protect a WIFI network. Any attacker that is sniffing your network traffic can also see what the MAC addresses are of all computers connected to your network. They can simple change their MAC address to yours and kick you off the network.