From Public To Private

Windows 7 has predefined a set of network locations, namely Home, Work and Public.  The aim of these locations is to alter the protections offered according to the selected locations.  To change from a location to another location is simple in Windows 7.  You simply click on the location, and select a new one, and that is you done.

However, this has changed in Windows 8.  In order to make it more "finger" friendly, Microsoft has changed the location setup to just two locations, namely Private and Public (On and Off), and placed it under network settings (Charm -> Change PC Settings -> Network).  In there, you will the network you are connecting to.  If you click the network icon where you are connecting to, you will see a switch controlling the sharing, i.e. on (Private) and off (Public)

However, there is a catch!  Most of the tutorials I found does not mention a very minor but a very important detail which is this switch is only shown if your Account Control Settings is not set at the highest level.  Since I have my Account Control Settings set to its maximum, I COULD NOT see this options till I found this article: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/9837-network-location-set-private-public-windows-8-a.html

If you are like me, like a bit of extra security, and have set the Account Control Settings to its highest level, then you may want to dial it down temporary to see this switch.