Laptop is connected to wifi but still shows yellow star and grey bars?

That's what I think it is... Also, when I plug in a network cable it does the samething.

Exact same issue and have done the exact same "fixes"..removed all NIC adapater and install all new/updated ones. reset ipconfigs .../rel /rew, etc
I get the exact same network map(red x)....but am connect to the internet (expect I can not do run windows update, cause I thing MS thinks this is not a legit connection?

Anyways.....I'd really appreciate some direction of where to get help..I've been poking around for days on forums and have found nothing that works....absolutely nothing...

TIA

This post is a little old, but i answer anyway... perhaps it is helpfull to someone.
I had the same problem, and everything went well when i booted the laptop in safe mode.
Didn't do anything special, just rebooted in safe mode, and then tried to do a system restore.
The system restoring failed, but everything began to run as it was doing before.

PS... About you can't connect wit VPN... guess the culprit is your antivirus.