Solved Intermittent Loss of Browsing But Still Showing Internet Is Connected

[prevaljo]

I tried to think of a "Good Thread Title" but failed. Over the last three or four days my Win7 desktop has exhibited very odd behaviour. It fails to connect to websites intermittently (many times in an hour) making the desktop nearly useless.

The behaviour is odd because the "Network Connection" does not show that the Internet connection has failed. All other devices connecting to the WiFi, phones, laptops, tablets continue to connect to the Internet through the router without a problem. After a period of time 5, 10 or up to 15 minutes connectivity is magically restored to the desktop. I have rebooted the machine many times and the problem has not gone away.

When the network is "broken" I can ping the local router but cannot connect to the local router's web interface. I cannot ping external websites by name ie Latest breaking news NZ | Stuff.co.nz | New Zealand.

When this first happened I assumed that it was the network card failing and installed a USB WiFi device, and removed the network cable, the problem still exists.

I have done ping test and nslookups but apart from telling me the "DNS Request timed out" I am no further forward.

 

[samuria]

Welcome to the forum. Set your DNS to 1.1.1.1 & 1..0.0.1 see if that fixes it

 

[prevaljo]

Just thought I'd update this. As I sought a resolve, looking through event logs and scouring the Internet I began to think it was a "firewall" issue. Avast apparently manages the Win7 firewall. Coincidentally while looking at the Avast console I noticed that there was an update waiting to be installed. Downloaded it, installed and rebooted the desktop. Currently the issue seems to have been resolved. Will give it another 24 hrs to see if it returns.