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My Windows 10 laptop has been experiencing a weird issue where the Wifi connects but I cannot access the Internet. When it starts, there's nothing I can do but restore Windows from backup or re-install Windows.

nslookup on Command Prompt works fine, I get DNS name resolution. But, ping or web browser or anything fails to resolve a DNS name. They sit, wait, and timeout with a DNS resolution error.

Tried flushing the DNS cache, re-installing the network driver, resetting the winsock driver, flushing the route table, re-connecting to wifi, specifying static DNS server IPs, switching Wifi networks, tethering through my phone, and rebooting. Nothing works.

Doubt it's a hardware issue, since re-installing Windows or restoring from a recent backup fixes the issue... at least until it happens again a few weeks/months later. Also tried disabling the onboard Wifi and plugging in a separate USB wifi adapter, same result.

Anyone have any thoughts? What would cause, and how to fix?

I've been making frequent full-system backups in the event this occurs again, I restore from backup and all is fine. Only thing I can think that changed around the time the issue began was I got a displaylink USB hub/display adapter for a third monitor.

Crash Override
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1 Answers1

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I just had the same issue on my Windows 10 laptop. I probably tried everything I could find in the net - nothing helped. Until finally I bumped on this - Windows 7 DNS not working (nslookup IS working; ping -4 name.com NOT working)

I tried to set the hostname before, it was probably the 1st thing I tried, but it did not help. In the answer by the link above they mention that the Domain record must be set also in the registry, at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters. It was missing. So after I created it manually with regedit (with just an empty string value since my PC wasn't in a domain, apparently it's the only way to restore it) - it immediately started working even without reboot.

Andriy
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