Network but no internet on Win 10

[Tippon]

My aunty asked me to look at her computer today as it’s not working properly. It turns out that it wasn’t booting to Windows 10, so my cousin thought she’d save me the hassle of getting involved and did a refresh ?

Basically, everything’s gone tits up, and I’m not sure what to do. The refresh has partially uninstalled a load of programs, including at least two antivirus (Norton AND McCrappy!), deleted Chrome, and made her internet shortcuts useless. It’s also wiped Office 2010 and and record of the product key. My first though was to reinstall Chrome, then use that to download the antivirus installers and then the removal tools. For some reason though, the internet won’t work at all.

The wifi wouldn’t work first, so I grabbed my homeplugs and connected the ethernet. No joy there either, so I took a known working USB wifi adaptor and still got nowhere. Her internet was working perfectly with all of our phones, so I ended up bringing the computer home. It’s not working on my wifi either, but worked perfectly when I booted into a Mint live disc, so it’s not the hardware.

It connects to the network and gets an IP address, but says there’s no internet connection. I’ve flushed the DNS and cache, reset the networking, disabled the firewall, and still nothing. I reinstalled then uninstalled Norton and McAfee using IOBit Uninstaller and the relevant removal tools in case they were lingering, but that didn’t help.

Is this just a case of backup and reinstall, or have I missed something?

Please help me to save my sanity! ?

[wasbit]

You could try a free programme like Complete Internet Repair

Windows 8 & 10 have Windows defender built in which is disabled when another anti virus is installed. It only needs the definitions updating.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Dave Rice]

A reset should totally uninstall any desktop apps so if you say some are partially uninstalled it’s forked up, so you’ve nothing to lose by doing a fresh install (back up the data). That will be a lot quicker than trying to sort it out, which I don’t think is possible any way. It sounds like the IP stack is totally knackered at a fundamental level.

Don’t install two antiviruses and I wouldn’t install either of those in any case. Kaspersky Free will probably do everything they need. Install O&O Syspectr so you can monitor and remotely access the PC in the future.

[Ed P]

Has she got a BT Homehub? If so the quick and dirty cure is to switch off 5GHz. I was regularly getting exactly that problem on a headless Pi. My guess is that her PC does not have 5GHz Wifi and BT’s carp hardware screws things up in that situation.

[Dave Rice]

I agree in principle Ed, but a Linux session works OK. Worth a try though.

[Bob Williams]

Daft question or have you done this, Ryan? – Tried connecting it to the internet via Ethernet instead of WiFi?

Sorry if you already tried it, but I had a similar problem with a neighbour’s PC some time ago. Her son had messed up the network by trying to manually connect her phone, his phone and her tablet, instead of letting them locate the router. Then, he said, he “Adjusted stuff.” but could not explain what stuff he ‘adjusted’. I fixed it by saving data, music, photos etc, doing a reinstall connected via Ethernet, reinstalling all drivers. Let both phones find the router, used password to install phones and tablet to network.

He actually knows less than his mum, who asked me to install a new router password and a new password to her PC. Obviously she does not want him to use her network again during his (infrequent) visits.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Mark Turner]

Have you tried flushing DNS cache and releasing and renewing ip? I have found this to work when I couldn’t get a pc to connect to the interweb.

 

[Tippon]

Thanks for the replies guys, and sorry I’m slow getting back to you. Apparently the mild flare up I’ve been having isn’t quite so mild. I couldn’t move my right knee or shoulder on Tuesday ?

I’ve tried connecting to ethernet, as well as wifi with a known working adaptor, and the built in adaptor works in Mint. I think Dave’s hit the nail on the head, and a reinstall is in order. I’ll hopefully be doing that over the weekend.

I was hoping that I’d missed something and could avoid a reinstall, but that doesn’t seem possible.

 

Dave Rice wrote:

Don’t install two antiviruses and I wouldn’t install either of those in any case

Wait, you thought I’d installed two antivirus, and used Norton and McAfee!? I’m shocked! Shocked I tells ya*! ??

*Well, I would be shocked if it wasn’t the sort of daft thing that I’ve done in the past ??

[Richard]

If you do go down the re-install route, remember to make an image of the result for a faster future recovery next time. There will by all accounts be a ‘next time’.

[Dave Rice]

We’ve all been there Tippon. A few weeks ago I installed Kaspersky Free on a mates PC totally forgetting I’d put Avast Free on there years ago ?

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install-winpc/how-to-perform-a-repair-upgrade-using-the-windows/35160fbe-9352-4e70-9887-f40096ec3085

You could try a repair upgrade as in the link above but backup your data first ?

[Dave Rice]

The Reset This PC in Recovery now has the option to keep your data.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Yes it does Dave but reset this PC only works if your installation has a recovery partition. That depends on how Windows was installed.

Anyway if you download the latest image and do an upgrade repair you get the latest version of W10 into the bargin ?

[Author]

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