Windows 10 says I have no internet connection, but I have.

Tom,

I understand that you too are frustrated with this issue. But the reality is that there are too many of us with the issue to ignore it. True or not, blaming third party applications is not what we want to hear. Like I mention in my post from earlier on April 22, I observed heavy network traffic generated by the active probe when either it cannot reach the designated site or some other issue. While it is possible for a third party app to cause problems, I simply could not identify one. (Out of curiosity, what happens if Microsoft's servers are having the issue on their end?)

Look, I and many others don't have the time nor the tools to fully diagnose Microsoft's problem. My job required me to address my departments NCSI issues on mission critical computers. By all accounts it appears I did this successfully by disabling active probe within the registry settings. I went against the flow of your teachings and was successful. This does not mean everyone will be successful, but 100+ computers of various vintages and manufacturers is a pretty good statistical population for my argument. And to add additional information, at least ten of the computers are Microsoft Surface's of varying types that had the issue.

You ask that we provide information so you can diagnose. I provided on this site the information I discovered in the process of narrowing the issue down to the active probe. I did my part to help you by providing what I found. I don't have time to spend hours on the phone with you and your team when the answer is in my grasp. I just ask Microsoft to take this issue seriously and address it. I sincerely want to use your product as you intended it to be used, but not at the cost of hours of you digging through my systems only to tell me it is a third party app, or worse yet that my system or network settings do not meet Microsoft expectations.

Finally, I highly doubt, as you imply, that Microsoft is unaware of the issue. As an engineer with many years experience, my guess is that they are already working on a fix or at the very least researching the problem. But until that fix is released, I ask you stop spreading the false information that "If you want to break your machine's network connectivity HARD disable the active probe." You have stated this at least a few times. If your statement were true, I would not be able to be adding this entry now, nor would I and my team of engineers have had network and internet access for the past month.

" it does cause system slowdowns for those computers that are running software that requires heavy network interaction."

This is the very first I've ever heard of someone raising a system performance issue caused by NCSI.   I believe you when you say what you observed, but underneath the covers I am skeptical that it's actually NCSI.

"Reviewing the multitude of information on this and other blogs, people are saying to "turn on" active probing in the registry settings with some very detailed instructions. But none of them can explain why it is so essential."

NCSI is the user mode logic responsible for determining what kind of network connectivity Windows has.  Namely internet, but also local and corporate inside/outside detection.  The connectivity status assessed by NCSI is used by various applications like Outlook, Teams, Skype, Windows Update, DirectAccess, and various third-party software.

The reason NCSI was developed was to save applications the incredibly complex task of determining network configuration on their own.  Imagine developing an application that performs network operations.  Every attempt to perform a task over the network would require constant attention to whether the network was still accessible.  In a network outage, even if short or intermittent, the application would timeout the operation and have to test the network continuously until it was intact.  This seems trivial until you consider that it must perform checks for a multitude of environmental factors such as being behind a proxy or hotspot/captive portal.  And it must also know if the network it detects is one that can satisfy its requests. Does it need full internet or just a private corporate access? All the while users must wait for their actions to complete or timeout while the application makes this determination.  Why should every application reinvent the wheel?  Windows should provide common functions that all software needs for network operations and simply notify applications upon changing conditions so that they can decide how to handle restrictive or no network connectivity. 

"Additionally, our finding is that active probing was turned on by default at the time of Windows install. So if it is turned on by default, why are all of the sites saying to turn it on?!?"

Windows doesn't turn off NCSI probing.  This is done by admins, or scripts being pushed, or perhaps even a third-party process.  But there's nowhere in WIndows code that has the ability to actually disable NCSI probing without admin manual action. 

All these sites mention turning it on because somewhere in the past somebody or something turned it off.

This is correct advice.

"... we DISABLED active probing... life continues without problems now."

That you haven't noticed any problems makes me think you think it's disabled but it's not.

Do this.  Verify that it's truly disabled on a computer you think it's disabled on by

1. Checking if the Network Location Service is running.   
2. Checking if this policy is ENABLED: Computer Config->Admin Templates->System->Internet Communication Management->Internet Communication Settings->Turn off Windows NCSI active tests
3. Checking if this policy is ENABLED: Computer Config->Admin Templates->Network->NCSI->Specify passive polling and Disable checkbox is checked.
4. Checking if this registry key has value 0: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet\EnableActiveProbing 

(If the key doesn't exist then it's on by default)

5. Checking if this registry key exists with value 1:  HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet\DisablePassiveProbing

If any of the above isn't true, NCSI is alive and well on your system.

But if it isn't, fire up Office and try to send out an email. 

"So I ask that Microsoft address the active probing issue. Until they do have a fix, please start recommending that people DISABLE active probing. We lived without it for many decades, we can live a few more while Microsoft works out this problem.

I will absolutely not recommend this.

But if you're interested in having an offline conversation with me to discuss your experience with NCSI in much more detail I'd love to talk to you.   In fact I think I could learn a thing or two that could indirectly benefit the improvements NCSI needs (everything needs improvements).  We can take a much deeper introspective look at your past analysis and figure out what's going on.

I am very amicable and open and genuinely interested in improving the product. 

If you're interested please fire off an email to the following address and we'll start a conversation there.  

(EDIT: I have to be sneaky about the email address because the privacy bots keep removing it.   :)

forncsihelp at outlook dot com

I will repeat what I've said many times in this thread.

If you want to break your machine's network connectivity HARD disable the active probe.

But seriously.

We do not currently know of any new NCSI bugs that suddenly break after upgrade past 1909.

If there was a new bug we'd be hearing about it globally from our customer base.

And if there was a new NCSI bug you'd be breaking your machine even harder by destroying any and all ability to detect network connectivity.

Maybe you found in your specific machine's environment that this works for you.  You will pay for it later.

DO NOT DISABLE ACTIVE PROBING.

Instead troubleshoot the reason the active probe doesn't get a response, which is usually best done by getting a network capture and checking for probe send and receive (or lack thereof).

Search this thread for my other responses on other details of troubleshooting.

I can't copy/paste this stuff every time someone posts the bad recommendation to disable the active probe.

Oh just please stop the rhetoric about the dangers of disabling active probing. 

My MIS director and I (I am an engineering director) have been dealing with this issue for over 6 months with computers throughout our business. It didn't matter if the employees were in the building or remote, the NCSI icon showed up regularly. And yes, it does cause system slowdowns for those computers that are running software that requires heavy network interaction.

We had noticed when the NCSI shows up, certain programs become choppy and systems slowed down. Our CAD and PLM system are tied together and the data is half cloud and half network based. I was seeing CAD stations laboring to access files when the NCSI globe appeared. During those times I was able to see the active probing traffic increase and the discrete computers processor, memory, and network activity spike. My MIS director was seeing the same from other department computers, including his, as well. 

Reviewing the multitude of information on this and other blogs, people are saying to "turn on" active probing in the registry settings with some very detailed instructions. But none of them can explain why it is so essential. Additionally, our finding is that active probing was turned on by default at the time of Windows install. So if it is turned on by default, why are all of the sites saying to turn it on?!?

This did not sit well with us because our analysis said active probing IS the issue. We narrowed the problem into how that feature works by watching traffic and discrete computer resource activity. When Microsoft active probing does its thing and something it doesn't like happens, that's when issues can be seen. Observations in the way the way network traffic increased tied with individual computer resource loading increased, we started thinking that we either had a virus or that active probing was stealing information. We verified no virus and came right back to active probing. And no, it is not our network or network settings, firewall or anything else we could find. Plus, we see the issue no matter where people tie into the internet (home, coffee shop, work, hotspot).

So opposite of what has been recommended seemingly everywhere, we decided to follow our own logic and went the opposite of prevailing thought/commentary and we DISABLED active probing.

I am here to say that this was an Instant fix for the nearly 100 computers we changed. No more issues, no more slowdowns, no more complaints, no network issues, no issues detecting if the internet is down, no network traffic spikes, no more computer resource usage spike from active probing, and unlike the doomsayers, life continues without problems now.

Most importantly, in deference to the Microsoft employee's doom saying above, none of our machines have broken network connectivity because of the change. In fact, I am typing this reply from one of the computers now that I changed over 1 month ago. The issue is completely gone now and not a single computer on our team has an issue with this change.  And yes, our people work in the the building and remote without issue.

So I ask that Microsoft address the active probing issue. Until they do have a fix, please start recommending that people DISABLE active probing. We lived without it for many decades, we can live a few more while Microsoft works out this problem.