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

devblogs.microsoft.com

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

#111

Post by intelVISA »

mymyairduster wrote: post #109
mrjin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want that sh*t to be there in the first place. No one knows better than the end user. And also, if the user could not reach some M$ server does not mean users' network was not connected to the internet. Anyway, won't be a trouble for me much longer. Retiring all my Windows instances, had enough.

It's crazy, everyone else is just letting M$ control the narriative and falling for it. Micro$oft is trying to define what is and is not 'internet' access, eg. they turn the definition of 'internet' to mean unfettered access to the micro$oft servers is and you're ability to send personal information over to them.

Internet access is when your machine can exfiltrate data to Redmond, CA.

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

#112

Post by sebazzz »

lxe wrote: post #62
photoGrant wrote: post #2

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.

For those that don't know, OOBE stands for "Out Of the Box Experience"

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

#113

Post by erlendellingsen »

woodruffw wrote: post #44
httpz wrote: post #38

I'm not sure if it's still in use but iPhones used to hit http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html to test connectivity. I used to use it to test connectivity on my own apps because Apple is probably better at making sure a url reachable than I am.

I believe they hit http://captive.apple.com now (and that's what I use).

Whenever I access a public Wi-Fi with login / captive portal, and the portal doesn’t show up immediately, I enter captive.apple.com in Safari to trigger it! Works every time (iPhone)

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

#114

Post by Twisell »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #102
photoGrant wrote: post #2

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.

This is why I refuse to update or upgrade Windows or my iPhone. They just keep over-engineering stuff and somehow it's always worse.

GPT3 gone bad?

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

#115

Post by cm2187 »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #76
lxe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is also currently the only way to bypass the need for an MS account when setting up a new PC.

And MS accounts make zero sense to anyone who has a private NAS or need to interact with anything non windows with kerberos.

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

#116

Post by lukeboi »

divbzero wrote: post #87

I suppose you could spoof having full Internet access by hosting nsci.txt or connecttest.txt locally and editing your hosts file to direct www.msftncsi.com or www.msftconnecttest.com to 127.0.0.1 ? Conversely, if those Microsoft websites ever failed, countless Windows machines would determine that they have limited or no Internet access.

yep! or do this at the dns level

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

#117

Post by picture »

qwertywert_ wrote: post #58
r1ch wrote: post #51

Unfortunately it's not that simple. On my system with bridges for hyper-v and wireguard tunnels, the NCSI service happily ignores my default route and tries to establish connectivity through one of the other devices when resuming from sleep. It wouldn't be that bad if it was just the status indicator, but several apps refuse to work properly if "internet" isn't detected. The workaround is to disable every other adapt…

Can't you disable NCSI in registry? Or does that not actually help for those other services internally?

If you do so, which I have tried, it will just show permanently no internet

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

#118

Post by cm2187 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #68
saagarjha wrote: post #61

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.

Particularly for unimportant things like authentication. There must be at least a dozen redirects when you login with your ms account online, none of which is a microsoft.com domain.

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

#119

Post by askvictor »

bombcar wrote: post #104
woodruffw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they hit http://captive.apple.com now (and that's what I use).

They use more than that, I've seen it on the wire (to prevent DNS caching I believe). http://neverssl.com also works And https://1.1.1.1 breaks people's brains if they know enough

Even more fun: https://16843009

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

#120

Post by unnah »

josephcsible wrote: post #80
lxe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What explanation other than malice is there for Microsoft not giving you that button all the time?

It was becoming common knowledge that you could disconnect your machine from networks during installation to use Windows with a local account (i.e. the normal kind of user account that people have used for decades). Microsoft wants people to register online during installation and to use the online account on all their computers, in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft online services such as OneDrive and Office 365. So it's not malicious, Microsoft is just implementing their strategy to create more monetization opportunities.
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