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How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

devblogs.microsoft.com

61–70 of 305 posts

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#62

Doing this during a Windows 11 install will result in a road block until you fix said connection issues. You literally can't proceed without finding a hidden terminal and disabling the process and restarting. Insane.

Yup. The full instructions can be found online but in general,

When you get to that step, press Shift + F10 to bring up the terminal, then type "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" and press enter.

The installer will restart but this time will have a "I don't have Internet" button that you can use to bypass this nonsense.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#63
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason for that is explained well in a comment on the article. Note that as with the Windows version, the protocol is HTTP, not HTTPS – because captive portals completely break TLS, but plaintext HTTP will result in a clean redirect to the portal, allowing the network service to detect the presence of the portal and to bring up a browser window to let the user authenticate. ( https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnew…

Why not just fire off a DNS request ? Not blocked by captive portals, and you get free caching.

They do, if you look at the docs Raymond linked that's actually the first step.

However that doesn't tell you about the presence of a portal or if HTTP traffic is actually possible.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#65

Two things I’ve always wanted to do is figure out how to cache windows updates on my local network without an enterprise windows install, and how to block windows updates by sinkholing domains and/or ip addresses (I work in IT security). Can anyone give any tips on either of these?

Why do you want to block windows updates?

It's standard practice. You don't roll out updates until they are tested.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#66
post #48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You sound like a typical engineer" I've been a Managing Director for 22 years. Make of that what you will, me old fruit.

Oh and what do you have against engineers? (typical or otherwise) I used to be Chartered (Stick n Bricks n that) ...

Nothing against us, I get it, stuff is complicated and hard to have a best solution for everyone.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#67
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

21 bytes extra at 1T requests a day = 21TB/day. Probably nothing?

You're correct, at global scale it's still peanuts (and of course it's not a single server but redundant clusters of servers). I have a problem at your math though, I'm guessing with the overhead and the pretend-IE headers it could be a whole Ethernet packet (which can be up to 1,500TB/day, but realistically it could be around 500TB).

My maths fine, I was comparing it to the comment suggestion of sending "1" instead of "Microsoft Connect Test" as the response body. The headers should be the same.

But I guess you could say the content length header would be 1 byte longer in the double digits length contents (which it is).

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#69
post #53

Not sure when Micro$oft can stop such abusive moves. Why the user have to be able connect to your endpoint to prove they are connected? Why keep nagging me to set active hours coz I regularly use my computer 8am to 6pm? Anyway, won't be my problem much longer.

What server do you suggest they use? Android uses Google servers is that also abusive?

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#70

Why does Microsoft always seem to pick domain names that are indistinguishable from phishing scams?

They do seem deliberately designed to be suspicious. Almost couldn’t be any worse even if they tried.

microsoft-internet-security.com
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