Win10 Pro says No internet, but Internet is fine.

Hello Experts,

I hope everyone is staying safe and doing well with everything going on.

We have a dozen machines at work with very annoying "No Internet" access problems. Some apps like Adobe Creative Cloud and Office don’t work. However, users can browse the internet just fine. For some users, after 20 mins - 1.5 hours little globe in the taskbar is replaced with the network icon and everything seems to be back to normal.

All company internet traffic goes through the Palo Alto Firewall. Would you agree with my statement that if the firewall is blocking “something” it would affect all 300 users in the company and not just a dozen?

Here is what I have done already on one of the user's workstation but still have the same “No Internet” access problem:

Windows 10 Pro 20H2 updated with all latest systems update
HP Workstation updated with all latest BIOS, firmware, etc., updates
Resetting Network Adapter and DNS using Command Prompt (netsh winsock reset, ipconfig /release, ipconfig /flushdns)
Changing the “Value data” from 0 to 1 or vise verse in registry (see below) doesn't make any differences. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet

I would think that this issue is somehow related to Win10 Network Status Service which cannot find (DNS resolution is failing) Microsoft Network Status Indicator Online Services. Microsoft probably has hundreds of online web servers responding to Win 10 client network indicator status queries. Perhaps the Microsoft web server located somewhere in Brazil (just as an example here I have nothing against Brazil ;-) is blocked due to the Geolocation restriction? Later, the same Win10 client tries again but this time Microsoft online service can be reached because it is located somewhere in the Microsoft data center in Germany.

Based on my theory above, until Microsoft fixes this issue, we need to “fool” Win10 clients somehow by providing them with a “fake” DNS entry response. I would think that some kind of DNS entry (zone, etc.) needs to be created on an internal DNS server so that Win10 clients can quickly find "fake" Microsoft Network Internet Service. If this makes any sense to anyone I need to know what exactly and how this can be done.

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

Windows 10

Last Comment

Olevo

8/22/2022 - Mon

Scott Silva

4/28/2021

If apps also don't work, you have an internet problem.. And there are a lot of things between the PC and the firewall that can cause issues... Bad patch cables... Bad jacks... Cabling run too close to fluorescent lights or AC power cables... Bad switch port. ETC... Try moving a problem machine to a jack and cable of a machine that has NO issues and see if it still happens...
If the problem follows the machine, it has the issues... Could be bad network port on motherboard or even bad chipset...
I had one machine that after a couple days it would just choke and disable the switch port it was connected to... Added PCI network card, but it still happened... Got inside the cubicle wall and found the cabling was wrapped around a power cable a couple winds... Once I fixed that, it stopped happening...
You never know what you can find...

Olevo

4/28/2021

ASKER

Thanks Scott for such a prompt response. I do understand that there can be many more reasons for a problem. However, in my particular case how can you explain that when a user restarts his/her Win10 machine it goes onto "No Internet" status mode for 20 mins or more even though everything was just fine before restarting?

CompProbSolv

4/28/2021

If you are not using it (and these are not servers), disable IPv6. I've seen that message when IPv6 doesn't have a proper internet connection, even though IPv4 does.

When you are seeing the indicator that there is no internet, try the following from a CMD prompt:

ping 1.1.1.1
ping google.com

If you post the results (after disabling IPv6) we may be able to give a better diagnosis.

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William Peck

serialband

4/28/2021

Where is it saying no internet? Is it the Network/WiFi Icon? That connection is specifically to a Microsoft server. If it can't reach that Microsoft server, it will show the no connection symbol even though you are actually connected.

Olevo

4/28/2021

ASKER

End-user doesn't have any problems with browsing the internet, ping google, etc. PC connected with the cable.

Olevo

4/28/2021

ASKER

I would assume that the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop client is using Windows 10 Network Status Indicator. Since Win10 detects a 'No Internet' connection, the lazy Adobe desktop client doesn't even bother to check Internet connectivity by itself.