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Why is your internet not working even though its connected?

Sometimes you may experience a rather strange thing on your Windows PC: the system will say that you don’t have an internet connection when, in fact, you can easily surf the web via your browser.

So, you may be asking yourself: “Why is Windows 10 saying “no internet” while the internet is working?” This is what we will address in this post.

What does “connected but no internet access” mean?

The “no internet” error message (which occurs even though surfing works) has been recently discussed on one of Microsoft’s user forums. The problem has been described by a user in more detail.

Apparently, after DNS server addresses were assigned manually, the system started to “believe” that there was no internet, even though the user could still surf the web. The problem seemed to arise right after the user manually entered DNS server addresses for the IPv4 protocol of the network adapter. After that, the system started showing the “no internet” icon and apps like Spotify and the like reported being offline while the browsers worked perfectly fine.

However, once the user changed the DNS server address settings back to automatic and restarted the computer, everything went back to normal: the internet was working properly, no apps reported a loss of connection, and the system did not think there was a connection problem.

So the answer to the problem seems to be simply keeping away from assigning DNS servers manually. However, this is hardly a desirable solution as setting DNS servers manually tends to result in much faster speeds and a lot of users prefer to have this option available to them.

So is there a better solution to the issue? It turns out there is

The answer to the problem seems to be related to a DWORD value in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet folder. Thus, changing that value in your computer’s Registry has been able to solve the problem for some users.

Here’s what to do:

  • On your keyboard, press the Win + R key combo to bring up Run.
  • Type “regedit” and press the Enter key.
  • You will see a User Account Prompt appear — click Yes to confirm.
  • Navigate to this folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet
  • Locate EnableActiveProbing and double-click it.
  • Change the value of EnableActiveProbing from 0 to 1.
  • Go on to restart your PC.
  • Once it restarts, you should be able to set DNS addresses manually without experiencing network issues on Windows.

The steps above should fix the problem for most users. However, sometimes you may face an additional issue: on reboot, EnableActiveProbing may go back to 0 again. If this is the case, the problem may be caused by recently installed software or malware on your PC. The best solution would be to run a comprehensive malware scan on your computer.

If your primary anti-virus doesn’t detect anything, try getting a second opinion with Auslogics Anti-Malware, which has been designed to detect even the rarest malicious items and can work alongside your main anti-virus so you won’t have to uninstall it. If no malware has been detected on your PC, try uninstalling any recent software you have downloaded and check if the problem goes away.

Finally, if you are frequently experiencing network errors, it may be a good idea to check your network drivers. An outdated network driver can be quite a nuisance on your system — thus, it is important to keep your drivers updated and working properly. There are two ways in which you can update your drivers: you can do it manually or automatically.

Updating system drivers manually is typically recommended for more experienced users as it is a complicated process involving multiple steps (like uninstalling your old drivers, downloading the new drivers for your OS version from the official website and installing them on your PC) and taking quite a bit of time. Moreover, if you make a mistake during this process, this may lead to even bigger issues on your PC.

If you don’t feel confident enough to reinstall your drivers manually, you can use special software to have them updated automatically. Auslogics Driver Updater can do the job for you: the program will first scan your system drivers for any existing or potential issues and then update the outdated drivers to the latest official versions in just one click. This way, you get to keep your drivers working properly without risking causing damage to your system or spending time going through the installation manually.

We hope the solutions above have been helpful and you are no longer running into network issues on your Windows 10 PC. Please share how you fixed the problem in the comments section below.