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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?

#221

Post by kiwijamo »

majkinetor wrote: post #196
lzooz wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when you try to load http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt or http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt ? If they don't load for you you probably modified your install with shutup10, block microsoft domains using your firewall or /etc/hosts or something else and you're out of support.

I can access those files, like I said irm http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt Microsoft NCSI irm http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt Microsoft Connect Test I had this on number of Windows computers, private and corporate. Almost all of them don't have anything like OSU10, simplefirewall etc.

Honestly I've never seen the issue you described on any windows machine on any network anywhere.

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

#222

Post by vetinari »

borissk wrote: post #166
majkinetor wrote: post #162

Too bad it almost never works correctly. Even now it says I have no Internet while I do and can access those txt files. I used thousadands of Windows machines in last decade, this is typical. You can ignore this "feature" almost entirelly. If you introduce proxy in your system, then you can be certain that it will not work, including Windows updates. You have to masssage your system with net commands and learn about…

It works perfectly well for 99.9999% of the users. The few exceptions are people with proxy servers, virtual machines and other exotic network configs.

"Exotic" network config, like having the default hyper-v adapter present? That one, that windows creates automatically once you enable hyper-v?

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

#223

Post by DangitBobby »

kiwijamo wrote: post #219
franga2000 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my first Apple device (an iPad) two weeks ago out of necessity and even created an Apple account in advance, assuming Apple will force me to use it. I was very surprised to find a very obvious "Skip" button that let me complete the process with no account. And just because other manufacturers do it, isn't a reason not to blame MS for what MS did. Nobody forced them to do this and it's not even common practic…

Are you able to e.g. install apps without an apple account? I seem to recall simple things like that wasn't possible unless you had signed into an apple account.

Not being able to use the app store is pretty different from not being able to setup the computer.

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

#224

Post by majkinetor »

kiwijamo wrote: post #221
majkinetor wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can access those files, like I said irm http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt Microsoft NCSI irm http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt Microsoft Connect Test I had this on number of Windows computers, private and corporate. Almost all of them don't have anything like OSU10, simplefirewall etc.

Honestly I've never seen the issue you described on any windows machine on any network anywhere.

Are you system administrator ?

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

#225

Post by vetinari »

videofreedom wrote: post #137
alar44 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you like to describe your standard practice? I am interested in implementing this after windows updates have killed our workstations multiple times. Is there a nice description / workflow / tutorial / script / community where I can learn how to do that? I did not find any recommended workflow for this by Microsoft itself, but maybe I was searching for the wrong things - windows updates are generally a bad thing…

You are looking for WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). If you have Windows Server somewhere, you can add WSUS role to it and use group policies to point your clients to it for updates.

Then, in WSUS console, you set up approvals for updates and then the updates will be offered to clients only once you approve them. You can divide the clients into groups and manage the approvals for these groups individually, so you can have a separate testing group.

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

#226

Post by vetinari »

c0nsumer wrote: post #215
muppetman wrote: post #88

I'd love to know how Apple decides if a Wifi network is usable or not. For some reason my home network is flagged as a "Mobile" network and people connected to it can't update to the latest version of iOS etc. Is it because I've also created a Mobile Hotspot with the same SSID on a spare mobile phone I have, so my family can use their iPads out and about without having to connect to a new Wifi network? (i.e. I just w…

DHCP option 43 is often used to indicate if a mobile network is metered. (May be other ways, this is the one I'm most familiar with.) I'm guessing your "spare mobile phone" is Android? Apple caches a lot of info about networks it connects to. So it's probably caching that it received this option and "knows" that network to be metered. Best solution for this is to have either more control over your mobile network so i…

AFAIK Apple ignores the dhcp 43, 'ANDROID_METERED' option. Or did they change?

Curiosly, Microsoft does respect it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocol..., though it has to be matched to 'MSFT 5.0' clients.

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

#227

Post by RunSet »

gruturo wrote: post #153
unnah wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onlin…

> So it's not malicious Ahem. You literally just described a very clear-cut, textbook example of malicious. Yes it is absolutely malicious.

People are so quick to assume malice whenever a multinational conglomerate practices deception in pursuit of profit. Whatever happened to engaging in good faith?

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

#228

Post by m-p-3 »

Google (ChromeOS, Android) does a similar thing by checking http://connectivitycheck.gstatic.com/generate_204 and expecting an HTTP Response Status 204, or else it assume there's a captive portal or something blocking Internet access.

Apple (iOS, MacOS) checks for https://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html and expects a basic HTML page with the body containing "Success".

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

#229

Post by sour-taste »

DoctorOW wrote: post #197
sour-taste wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's been around a long time and likely built up a lot of good will. I strongly suspect that he does these blog posts as a side project and is encouraged by management because they are popular and people like them. It would be foolish of a manager to kill something that people like.

I'd argue Microsoft management has been perfectly fine killing off things people like.

I said it'd be foolish, not that they wouldn't do it :D

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

#230

Post by RunSet »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #39

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?

> how to cache windows updates on my local network without an enterprise windows install

https://download.wsusoffline.net/

will download Windows updates and create an installer for them.

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