Windows 10 version 2004 may show "no Internet" even though there is Internet access
Microsoft's latest feature update for Windows 10, Windows 10 version 2004, has had its fair share of issues already. The situation has not been as bad as before -- Windows 10 version 1809 still has the crown when it comes to user-impacting issues -- but it is not far behind in regards to bugs.
Most users are probable better off installing only the second feature update of the year; the first feature update has matured since then and the second feature update is just a smaller update that should not introduce as many issues.
Microsoft confirmed another issue that is affecting some devices running Windows 10 version 2004. A report on the Technet forum highlights that the Internet connectivity indicator may not work properly.
The network indicator shows the "no Internet" icon on affected systems even though there is Internet connectivity. In other words: programs may access the Internet as usual despite Windows reporting that there is no Internet connection.
Customers are reporting "no internet" access in the Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) on Windows 10 2004 devices on devices that in fact can ping internet resources or browse web sites with internet browsers.
The issue has not been added to the official list of known issues here. It is unclear why Microsoft is confirming issues in "other places" but not adding the confirmed issues to the list of known issues on the official documentation page.
The issue is under investigation currently according to Microsoft. It is probably not of the highest priority considering that it is a visible bug only that does not affect use of the system (once users realize that Internet connectivity is available).
The company's Windows 10 operating system was plagued with another Internet connectivity issue just months ago. Back then, Windows 10's network indicator icon would show "limited" or "no connectivity" on devices that use proxy or virtual private network connections. The issue back then did limit Internet connectivity of affected devices, though.
Tip: if you want to know how Windows finds out the status of a device's Internet connectivity, check out this informational guide.
I believe it’s not just a visible bug.
I think the Office 365 suite relies on NCSI, and when this problem occurs Office has activation and sign-in issues…
They say there is a Registry setting in REGEDIT that gets turned off when the 2004 update is installed and is set to 0 and it has to be 1. It’s not a visual bug.
The setting is about automatically and actively checking for internet connection. So the widget on the tray doesn’t check and automatically assumes there is no connection when there in fact is.
Have been getting this in 1909 maybe earlier, happen when waking PC from sleep.
Happened to me out of the blue after enabling hyper-v, even though network location awareness probing is set to a local subnet problem has since seemed to have disappeared on its own out of the blue, but some vms still have the issue.
I get the same as noz reported with O365 but only when connecting through a VPN.
Prior to 2004 I was on 1909 using the same VPN and I did not have this issue.
Won’t fix, ‘cos it blocks telemetry… ?
And then I woke up.
Linux is the only way if you want a privacy-respecting OS. macOS is better than Windows, too, but not as good as Linux in that aspect.
What is it with MS and internet connectivity. I had all the issues Martin referred to earlier in the year, with VPN, and downloaded the specific patch, applied it, and can honestly say that it is better, but still only 80% improved, even though they offered a specific patch.
Windows for YEARS, has misreported the status indicator. It was common to show the wifi symbol when connected hard-wired, and even this vice-versa. Dropping connections, or flaky connections can be common, even though you know your network is fine, and only certain devices are affected.
Microsoft probably are sitting on a bunch of ancient code here, that really is not fit for purpose, and some of the best times I’ve had, has been with “plain old” Windows 7.
The amazing thing is this is as elemental and basic as it gets. Isn’t it?
When MS introduced Vista, they decided to write their own network stack software for Windows. In previous Windows versions they used BSD code for their network stack.
MS did so, because they wanted to implement more features into this new network stack and it would have taken too much time/money/effort to adjust their existing BSD code. In and of itself not a bad decision.
However, the MS network stack has never been as stable as the BSD network stack. And it never will be, because these extra features turned into bloat and telemetry in more modern versions of Windows.
The same “not connected to internet” tray icon can also be seen when you disable telemetry, using a tool like ‘O&O Shutup10’ or when you are too eager blocking traffic to Microsoft domains in your HOST file or on your router at home.
To my understanding, Microsoft verifies the state of your internet connection against their (telemetry) servers. And if your computer cannot connect to their servers, then there must be no internet available, right?
Wrong…so, so wrong.
@Gerold, if this is right (the link between the connection to their servers and/or telemetry) this is really terrible!!
Its like, “yeah, sure there’s a connection, all is working fine, but we’ll disconnect or alter your icon display if you don’t play by the rules and connection to the mothership 24/7”
Not good, really not good, if true.
@Gerold Manders
> To my understanding, Microsoft verifies the state of your internet connection against their (telemetry) servers. And if your computer cannot connect to their servers, then there must be no internet available, right?
Wow, that’s a low blow even by Microsoft standards.
@Gerald Mathers
I’ve had that network connectivity check disabled before with no behavior changes. Other times, exactly the glitches described here. The check can actually be set to ping anywhere but default is some MS IP addresses.
I’m curious what those “features” were. A stable network connection can be created from scratch with a few lines of code, basic Linux distros require that be done.
A connectivity check generally is a good idea unless privacy is very important but it can be done with a command prompt one liner. I’d bet the MS people who created the new, improved network stack are long gone.
Been happening here since version 1809 here.
Oh the joys of being a part of Microsofts Botnet of testers.
i have similar issue with dnscrypt-proxy on windows 10 2004,
this solution may be help too for VPN user
https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy/wiki/Installation-Windows#troubleshooting
I experienced this issue too with DNSCrypt and this helped.
Oh, thank you so much!!! Fixed!..
So, that was the reason why it was broken all this time??? Really???
While I was there I also changed the settings so it’s now looking for the test file on my own local web server…
I’ve just managed to fix another problem where having Windows Sandbox installed made it impossible to run full system backup because of some obscure error… Had to uninstall Windows Sandbox…
Apparently, Microsoft tests Windows with no other software installed, default configurations only… If you tell them about a problem, all they can say to you: reset your PC to the clean state…
Something reset the feature-update delay on a Windows 10 1909 computer I home-administer and it got stealth-upgraded to 2020 behind my back, yesterday. The “no Internet access” issue was NOT merely a false-positive on that computer. There actually WAS no Internet access. TeamViewer, Google Chrome, etc., wouldn’t connect, and network diagnostics and repair was no help.
I didn’t want the upgrade in the first place, and I administer this particular computer by phone and (when it has Internet access!) TeamViewer, so instead of wasting more time trying to make 2004 work, I had the person on the other end of the line roll back to 1909 and all is well once again. (Needless to say, I then remoted in to make sure the feature-update delay was set back to the maximum 365 days … knock on wood.)
A couple of other commenters mentioned Office 365 (which I gather is now called Microsoft 365). Well, last Wednesday there was a massive four-hour-long outage affecting Outlook for Windows, in both Microsoft 365 and at least the more recent locally installed versions of Microsoft Office. (Apparently, Microsoft pushed a new security check to Outlook *servers* without adequately testing it from all of the various Outlook *clients*. What are the odds, right? ;-) Anyway, depending on the timing, problems with Microsoft 365 might have been due to the Outlook outage rather than the 2004 Internet-access bug.
Oops! “stealth-upgraded to 2020” should read “stealth-upgraded to 2004.” I’m sure everyone knew what I meant and that it was my evil, evil fingers playing their evil, evil mischief once again. ;-)
Also, I should have made it clearer that the Outlook outage affected only *recent* Outlook *clients* from *Windows*. Access from iOS, from iPadOS, from browsers, and from *older* versions of Microsoft Office for Windows was apparently unaffected. Anyway, this particular problem got fixed and is probably be a one-off, so it’s a moot point now.
> Something reset the feature-update delay on a Windows 10 1909 computer
That was me. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Windows 11 will solve everything and our computers will prepare some coffee and biscuits too. :]
Going on for a long time–not just 2004: Make System Restore or leave everything alone:
Step 1) The users would need to open Windows Search
Step 2) Now click at “Registry Editor†[or Windows key – R – regedit]
Step 3) Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internetâ€
Step 4) The users would now need to modify “EnableActiveProbing†and change the value from ‘0’ to ‘1’
Step 5) Click on “Ok†and close the Registry Editor
Step 6) At last, the users would need to restart their computers
By: Aalok Sensharma
The fix is documented all over the Internet. Yes, it works. Maybe not for you, though.
“EnableActiveProbing”=dword:00000001
Is the default value on LTSC 1809. I would assume one of those “privacy enhancers” people insinst running switches its value to 0.
These settings I use often, now I have the same, probing to 0 and it shows I have internet connectivity all the time. I had the 2004 issue for a while, it seems to have fixed itself.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet]
“ActiveDnsProbeContent”=”0.0.0.0”
“ActiveDnsProbeContentV6″=”::1″
“ActiveDnsProbeHost”=”127.0.0.1”
“ActiveDnsProbeHostV6″=”127.0.0.1”
“ActiveWebProbeHost”=”127.0.0.1”
“ActiveWebProbeHostV6″=”127.0.0.1”
“ActiveWebProbePath”=”127.0.0.1”
“ActiveWebProbePathV6″=”127.0.0.1”
“EnableActiveProbing”=dword:00000001
Everyone enjoying your downgrade to 10? Glad i’m using Windows 7 with ESU. No bugs, no stress, and I have control of my OS.
Part of the fun, maybe most of the fun, when working with any OS is problem-solution. Some prefer to surf the Internet day and night, play games day and night, watch movies/tele day and night and never realize the fascination with learning how to fix an OS. Started with XP for me; Windows 7 has plenty of glitches.
And building web sites/blogs.
Have fun hanging out with Win 7.
@Anonymous
I’m still on Windows 7 too.
I tried to upgrade to Windows 10, but I got confused, forgot who I was, and then I got lost in a sewer where I lived with a sounder of feral swine, who made me their leader. Then 5 years later, I remembered who I was, found my trailer home, and I’m still on Windows 7.
Mine started doing the globe icon for no internet and some messages too saying check your connection. Browsers worked fine online – store apps didn’t though.
It was the settings in my wifi adapter properties for the Internet Protocol Version 4 – properties showed use this IP and use this DNS and both were blank… so just changing those to automatically get IP and DNS .. was the simple fix that took me about 4hrs to figure out.
Send MS a bill for your Tech time. :)
We should all do that and never stop doing it. Bury them in spam.
My internet problem gets solved when I switch off my modem and restart. Every time I have to do it
If you have a separate router, try reinstalling the firmware after doing a factory reset (push the reset button or do it from the GUI.) You’ll probably have to redo all the settings afterward.
It’s usually not necessary but still a good practice to reset a router when updating firmware.
Router firmware can become corrupted with symptoms identical to Windows bloatbreaks.
I’ve had this issue sporadically in every version of Windows for years.
Usually affects wireless the most and usually the 5GHz band, then mysteriously clears up in few hours.
The bug earlier this year was severe, I rolled back months of updates after our wireless became unpredictable. Now we’re on June’s updates 1909 and all is well.
What is it with MS and the Internet? I’ve used countless Linux distros from all three main branches and universally they connect wireless almost instantly, are faster than Windows and never disconnect.
Seriously – do these idiots check *anything* before releasing?
And is Microsoft *ever* going to get networking – local *or* Internet, wireless *or* cable – working correctly?
Hi guys,
For me none of the workarounds worked… So after some time of research I figured out that a simple ping to dns.msftncsi.com is not working.
After reading
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-connections-from-windows-operating-system-components-to-microsoft-services#bkmk-ncsi
about the NCSI, I just changed in the registry the following configuration to point the old MS servers:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet]
“ActiveDnsProbeContent”=”88.221.52.97”
“ActiveDnsProbeHost”=”www.msftncsi.com”
“ActiveWebProbeContent”=”Microsoft NCSI”
“ActiveWebProbeHost”=”www.msftncsi.com”
“ActiveWebProbePath”=”ncsi.txt”
“EnableActiveProbing”=dword:00000001
And voilà , working again :)
Works for me. Thank you so much!!!
I tried to go to airplane mode and comeback and it worked