Yellow exclamation mark on network icon

Question

_{Friday, October 5, 2018 12:57 PM}

I have a user (Windows 10 1803) with updated drivers.

This user has a yellow exclamation mark showing on his network icon - stating no internet access - but he does have internet access.

Now I have come across this problem on 40 of my 80+ workstations.  So it is intermittent and makes no sense.

I do know the issue is caused by Microsoft trying to connect to www.msftconnecttest.com in an attempt to get a text file to prove internet access as found in the below registry setting.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet....

So what is the big deal you have internet access and the computer works right, wrong.  Because of this error a lot of things actually stop working (all Microsoft products) such as Office 365, will no longer authenticate, which is my biggest issue.

I have tried all the internet suggestions.

* Flushed dns 

* Changed dns to point to 8.8.8.8

* Reset winsock connection  -  Usually the yellow exclamation mark will clear by this time, but not on this laptop.

* Released and renewed IP configuration

* Uninstalled the network driver - reinstalled

* Tried wireless connection - same result

* Ran tracert to all the websites in the regedit - all successful

* Restarted network connection services

At the same time restarting the computer after each attempt and so far no success.

Has anyone else come across this issue and aside from the things I have already done, have any constructive advice?

All replies (4)

_{Monday, October 8, 2018 6:02 AM}

Hi Wendy,

If your Internet Connection is fine actually, only the network icon is with Yellow exclamation. You have found the reason, NCSI cause. Windows has a component internally that identifies any change in the connectivity of the network. It is called as “Network Connectivity Status Indicator”.

NCSI is mainly responsible for detecting the Internet connectivity status and is part of NlaSvc (Network Location Awareness service). One of its tasks is to perform a background testing to determine if the machine has Internet connectivity or not.

Some anti-virus or third-party security software will block www.msftconnecttest.com traffic. Thus here I suggest you turn off /disable all security software and add the www.msftconnecttest.com to trust site.                

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_{Thursday, November 29, 2018 5:12 AM | 1 vote}

Wendy,

I ran into this same issue on one of our HyperV servers. In my case, this was a terminal server that was part of a TS farm and as you can imagine, with the NCSI showing "No Internet Access" caused quite a bit of issues.

I tried everything that you listed and had no success. It clearly had "Internet" through and through and our AV application was not causing the problem.

After much trial and error, I was finally able to resolve this by doing the following on my server (and perhaps you can adapt these steps to your Windows 10 PC):

-Shutdown the server.
-Disabled the NIC (on the guest).
-Turned on the server.
-Opened REGEDIT.
-Navigate to the following key (made a backup of this first):
      -HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\NetworkConnectivityStatusIndicator
              -Deleted all "NoActiveProbe" and "NoActiveProbing" registry values.

-Then navigated to this registry key (made a  backup first):
      -HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet
              -Set the registry value of the "EnableActiveProbe" to 1

-Shutdown the server.
-Enabled the NIC on the guest.
-Turned on the server.
-Logged on and reconfigured the IP settings for the server.
-Restarted the server.

_{Tuesday, March 26, 2019 5:32 PM}

This fixed computers in my domain.  

_{Saturday, September 28, 2019 7:51 PM}

Hi Wendy,

Did you find any resolution of this issue ? We are also facing same issue, please share what you did to resolve this issue.

-James

-James