No access to Network Neighbourhood in Vista if no devices

[Flint]

The situation: there are no network cards in Vista installed.
When trying to access the Network Neighbourhood in TC, it shows twice the same message:

Code: Select all

[Window Title]
Network

[Content]
Network discovery is turned off. Network computers and devices are not visible. Please turn on network discovery in Network and Sharing Center.

[OK]

and then the following:

Code: Select all

---------------------------
Total Commander
---------------------------
External exception 80000004.
Please report this error to the Author,
with a description of what you were doing when this error occured!
Continue execution?
---------------------------
Yes   No   
---------------------------

The Network folder is then shown empty (if plugins are installed they are visible).

In different experiments the different messages may be shown, e.g. in the next experiment I received the following message:

Code: Select all

---------------------------
Total Commander
---------------------------
Access violation at address 75DA54EF. Read of address FFFFFFFE.
Please report this error to the Author,
with a description of what you were doing when this error occured!
Continue execution?
---------------------------
Yes   No   
---------------------------

The problem is reproduced both in x86 and x64 versions of Vista.

[ghisler(Author)]

Total Commander does not show such a message, it must be coming from the system. Total Commander does ask the system whether it supports network functions or not, and if not, hides the nethood. Apparently Microsoft has broken this function on Vista, so TC still tries to access the network...

[ghisler(Author)]

This should be fixed now, although the access will be relatively slow: TC tries multiple times to get the remote server list, because Vista sometimes returns an empty list on the first call even if there are servers...

[Flint]

I have just tried it in Vista x86, no error is shown now, but the wating lasts for about 6-8 seconds...

[ghisler(Author)]

Unfortunately I found no better solution. The function which I used on older Windows versions to test if a network is present or not is not working on Vista. It always reacts as if there is a network.

Do you have any idea how I could determine quickly whether a network is available or not? Vista seems to know it, otherwise it wouldn't show this error message...