Web browser keeps opening to msn by itself randomly

Both a colleague and me had this with our Win10 company notebooks occurring with connections to an internal WiFi that requires authentication through a web page.

We both disabled EnableActiveProbing via registry key and it was instantly gone.

Probably happens when there's short connection drops but the session remains active so that instead of the redirect to a login page we hit MSN which is just intended as a 'probe'...

I'm sure, Microsoft had good intentions doing this but in environments with wireless networks sporting landing pages, but this is definitely going to confuse users more than it helps. I would say it isn't a good feature if even support professionals don't spot it and suggest clean Windows installs - which indeed wouldn't help because it IS a system feature.

Is there a statement from MS on this "defined behavior"?

Why would i want to install a linux based os. Was this just a piss poor attempt humour?

I have been having the same issue myself i use chrome as my browser i got home from work and i see msn is open i did not open msn as i dont use it so i check my history and see it has opened every 7/8 mins since two o’clock in the morning without any promt i am using windows 10 on a windows 10 ready hp laptop i only really use it for youtube and netflix and it has never had this issue before in the past i have read through the thread and dont see any solutions that has worked for me and i would also prefer not to system hack my laptop to avoid a simple pop up i do have a pop up blocker which ofcourse failed to prevent this if anybody has any suggestions it would really help its not exactly a major issue at all but let be honest microsoft this is an issue you should be able to resolve as from looking into this i can see this issue has been ongoing since 2011 if not earlier and its very frustrating to see the lack of support offered for loyal customers this is the sort of behaviour that is forcing me to switch over to apple or playstation ect... its not the best image i am in high hopes of a prompt response that will resolve my problem

In the case of wifi, this can be fixed by simply disconnecting from the wireless network that has the captive portal. I'd also recommend unchecking the automatically connect option for any wifi network that has a captive portal, otherwise you'll be plagued by this.

Changing the registry setting is more of a nuclear option, so I recommend against using it unless you don't know what interface windows thinks has a captive portal. What you can try is disabling each network interface one at a time (including software interfaces, like tunnel or VPN interfaces.) Open the change network adapter settings applet (right-click the network icon in your systray, click view network connections, click change adapter settings) then try disabling those one at a time by right-clicking on the adapter icon and clicking disable.

Sure it is a 'nuclear' option but maybe that's what you want for a s**t feature like this. I don't have auto connect enabled, but manually disconnecting WiFi feels like dialing in and out on a 56k modem back in the days, nobody does that when you just leave work/airport and shut your computer - typically a notebook - down and leave the place.

On the other hand: Might be a loss of comfort for inexperienced user on airports,  but typically you would open a browser, hit your start page and get redirected in 99% of the cases where you connect to such networks anyways, so I don't see any downside of muting the behavior down via registry.

It's highly intrusive and the fact that even Microsoft support gets fooled by it tells me this is just bad design.

could you please share the registry hack you used to resolve the issue.. i am having the same issue and it is frustrating. thank you.