Windows not connecting to most websites.

[yogurt245]

I turned my firewall off before going on vacation, leaving just my wifi router, pihole, and modem running. Coming back after 10 days, I turned on my firewall, let it load up and connected my devices to my network. My phone can access websites, including my mini PC, but for some reason my Laptop can't. I left my laptop at home, so it wasn't connect to any other network.

 

I did the following below,

 

• IP renew/release
• netsh int ip reset
• Windows wizard network reset
• DNS flush
• restart multiple times
• clear cache in browsers
• hook my wifi router directly to my modem
• disabled pihole and just used 8.8.8.8 as a dns
• restart my router and pihole

 

 

This is getting very madding. The Windows wizard is absolutely useless as it wants to network reset, but doing so doesn't do anything. The event viewer is stating that the services connecting to the web are timing out after the configured DNS servers didn't respond. So it's not my network as my phone and linux mini pc connect just fine. It's definitely something with Windows not wanting to configure DNS properly.

 

Ebay loads fine at times, but new pages look weird. Same thing with another site. Facebook just wont connect at all.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DrMacintosh]

Make sure your network is not blocking your laptop. I would also make sure your laptop is not set to manually target a specific DNS server.

 

One simple sanity check would be to connect your laptop to your phones hotspot. If everything works as normal, then you know its a network configuration error.

[yogurt245]

Firewall isn't blocking my laptop and DNS is set to my pihole's ip on my router. Tried mobile hotspot but that doesnt work either. Tried 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 as a manual DNS in network adapters and it still wont connect to websites on hotspot. Tried those IP's on my wifi and same results.

[Catsrules]

Can you ping 8.8.8.8?

 

Can you ping google.com?

[adm0n]

Just a random thing, but have you checked if the time is correct on your pc and router? SSL doesn't work if the time is off by too much.

[yogurt245]

12 hours ago, Catsrules said:

Can you ping 8.8.8.8?

 

Can you ping google.com?

Yes, I can ping 8.8.8.8 just fine, as well as www.google.com.

 

12 hours ago, adm0n said:

Just a random thing, but have you checked if the time is correct on your pc and router? SSL doesn't work if the time is off by too much.

Yep, it's up to date by the second.

 

Apps like steam can't connect as well so it's not my web browsers. Windows is doing something with DNS

 

Edit: Now it can't find www.google.com after a ping test, but 8.8.8.8 works. Windows wizard is now saying "the remote device or resource won't accept the connection" when selecting all network adapters for the diagnoses.

 

Edit 2: Disabling TinyWall (software firewall), I can now access some sites but facebook and gmail are still not responding. I completely disabled tinywall and did a tcp/ip reset along with a winstock reset in command prompt. After restarting, I'm still having these issues. I can ping ebay just fine, as well as access it through firefox. Facebook I can ping, but can't access it through any browser on my laptop. Again, this is just on my laptop with windows, not my phone and mini pc running linux. Steam is also able to connect to it's services and update games. Windows however can't update through it's servers.

 

Edit 3: This issue is now getting more weirder and annoying. Windows can't check for updates and Youtube is inaccessible. Yet Steam/GOG can updates games and I can now view this site through my laptop. I can ping youtube just fine, however pinging any of Microsoft's update servers I get a request timed out. Checking the logs on my firewall reveals that none of the requests are being blocked. It's not a virus as scanned multiple times, and nothing showed up. Pihole is also not blocking the requests as it's returning an "ok answered" status.

[Catsrules]

On 12/14/2023 at 4:54 AM, yogurt245 said:

Yes, I can ping 8.8.8.8 just fine, as well as www.google.com.

 

Yep, it's up to date by the second.

 

Apps like steam can't connect as well so it's not my web browsers. Windows is doing something with DNS

 

Edit: Now it can't find www.google.com after a ping test, but 8.8.8.8 works. Windows wizard is now saying "the remote device or resource won't accept the connection" when selecting all network adapters for the diagnoses.

 

Edit 2: Disabling TinyWall (software firewall), I can now access some sites but facebook and gmail are still not responding. I completely disabled tinywall and did a tcp/ip reset along with a winstock reset in command prompt. After restarting, I'm still having these issues. I can ping ebay just fine, as well as access it through firefox. Facebook I can ping, but can't access it through any browser on my laptop. Again, this is just on my laptop with windows, not my phone and mini pc running linux. Steam is also able to connect to it's services and update games. Windows however can't update through it's servers.

 

Edit 3: This issue is now getting more weirder and annoying. Windows can't check for updates and Youtube is inaccessible. Yet Steam/GOG can updates games and I can now view this site through my laptop. I can ping youtube just fine, however pinging any of Microsoft's update servers I get a request timed out. Checking the logs on my firewall reveals that none of the requests are being blocked. It's not a virus as scanned multiple times, and nothing showed up. Pihole is also not blocking the requests as it's returning an "ok answered" status.

 

It is really sounding like you got something messed up with your DNS settings. Try setting 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 as your DNS server and see if that fixes it.

[yogurt245]

Welp I figured out the issue. I installed a firewall on my computer about a month ago called portmaster. It's open source and everyone was giving it glowing reviews. So I decided to try it out for a day and didn't like it, so I though I disabled it. Well, Windows had the bright idea of silently re-enabling it without any notifications. After doing an upgrade install fix, the icon showed up on hidden icon bar. I completely uninstalled it and everything is working now.

 

I scanned my system with both defender and Trend Micro and nothing came up, so a Windows update probably screwed with a setting.