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

This problem doesn’t really have anything to do with being able to reach that link. If you look at the thread, you’ll see that most of us have no problems actually connecting to the Internet. The problem is Windows 10 ver 2004 displays that there is no Internet access when there actually is. It makes connecting to Microsoft cloud-centric apps (Store, Feedback, Office 365, etc) impossible. 

its displaying no internet access because its not getting a response back from that particular link, it doesnt care about the rest of the internet being up

http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt and http://msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt need to return something valid, typically its "Microsoft Connect Test", or a warning about the server, if you get a timeout from either one then win10 will think it has no internet access

for me the first link works but the second link does not.  what msftconnecttest.com is currently resolving to either does not exist, or does not have that file on it.  whatever the underlying issue is it means i dont get a response back and win10 thinks i have no internet access

as the easiest (and only) thing we can do from our side to fix it is to override that dns entry by adding it to our hosts file so it points to something that does work (like the 13.107.4.52 address)

run notepad as administrator

file > open

go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

change the file types to All Files (*.*) so you can see it

hosts should be in the list, open it

go to the bottom of the file

add a blank line to the bottom, then add the following two lines (you may be able to get away with just the second one, but it cant hurt to add both)

13.107.4.52 www.msftconnecttest.com

13.107.4.52 msftconnecttest.com

add a blank line at the bottom under these (dont leave the entry as the last line or it may not work)

save it

close notepad

restart windows

thats all i did and its now working fine - nothing else worked for me except this - and yes, everything o365 related re-activated again

 

i have ipv6 disabled, if you have it enabled you may need to find the ipv6 address that works for this (use nslookup)

 

why it wasnt working

 

for me www.msftconnecttest.com resolves to 13.107.4.52, but msftconnecttest.com resolves to two completely different IP addresses (dns round robin), 104.215.95.187 and 52.164.206.56, neither work properly so win10 thinks i have no internet access.  http://104.215.95.187/connecttest.txt just times out, and http://52.164.206.56/connecttest.txt generates an empty response error 

 

if we make sure that what www.msftconnecttest.com and msftconnecttest.com resolves to will work then win10 will realise it has internet access again and we will stop tearing our hair out

 

if you want to know what they currently resolve to (as ping wont show the round robin on the second one)

start a command prompt (doesnt need to be admin)

type in nslookup

type in www.msftconnecttest.com

then type in msftconnecttest.com

note down the ip addresses you get and use a web browser to check each one (http://ipaddress/connecttest.txt) and that they all generate a valid return or have an issue (if you had it working for a while then it stopped it will probably be because one of them works and the other doesnt)

 

note - at some point when microsoft fix this you will need to remove the entry/entries from your hosts file

Well, I've learned something new!  This solution actually solved the problem for me (at least for now).  The interesting thing is when I did a nslookup to both of those addresses, nslookup received no response from the server.

C:\Users\Admin>nslookup http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt

Server:  UnKnown

Address:  ::1

*** UnKnown can't find http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt: No response from server

C:\Users\Admin>nslookup http://msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt

Server:  UnKnown

Address:  ::1

*** UnKnown can't find http://msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt: No response from server

Regardless, the entry into the hosts file did seem to resolve the issue for me!

UPDATE 8/31/2020 (the next day):

The problem hasn't come back yet and I feel that it is now completely resolved! 

Thanks Raymond Neeve!!

UPDATE 9/3/2020:

My internet connection icon is still operating perfectly!!! Thanks again for your solution Raymond Neeve!!

UPDATE 9/18/2020:

Still haven't had a single issue with this workaround.

that solution did not work for me   I was already set at 1

Hello, I've had the same issue recently. I have tried all solutions within the first and second google page results of the search term. Apparently my issue was tied to static DNS servers. It seems like windows does not like that. I have tried changing the DNS servers, one to local (dnscrypt-proxy, 127.0.0.1) and to a server in the network (dnscrypt-proxy, 192.168.1.xxx). What ended up working was apparently was just turning on DHCP. Since my router/switch can be configured as a DNS forwarder, I just forwarded the local (dnscrypt-proxy, 192.168.1.xxx)  to there. Windows now detects internet connection like normal.

I have tried just about all the different solutions in this thread but to no avail. 

I have a Netgear Nighthawk LTE MR1100 mobile home Hotspot router that offers both wireless and ethernet. As I stated previously if I connect using the Wi-Fi I get the error saying no internet but if I connect the ethernet the error message goes away while connected with both Wi-Fi and ethernet. I feel that since it is an issue created by the developers globaly, I feel they should reverse engineer the build that caused the issue for discovery purposes and release a patch to satisfy the issue. 

I understand the purpose of testing and reporting software glitches but isn't it up to the engineers/developers to repair issues we as testers discover? (rhetorical) Meanwhile, I'll just keep trying to figure a work-around.