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I installed a fresh Windows 11, using a virtual machine on my local laptop computer. I received the message "Oops, you've lost internet connection," during OOBE.

I'm aware of certain tools and products that might be blocking the internet connection. Within the virtual machine, I can press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt and I can ping hosts and resolve all DNS names that I tested with no problems. Clearly, the internet connection works but whatever Windows is looking for may be blocked or failing.

What is Windows looking for to verify that the internet connection is working?

P.S. I'm aware of how to bypass this. That's not the question.

harrymc
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Appleoddity
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  • What VM connection method are you using? Host Only will block external connections – John Sep 27 '23 at 18:54
  • @John as mentioned, I have full network connectivity from the command prompt in the virtual machine. The connection is NAT'd. – Appleoddity Sep 27 '23 at 18:55
  • Strange then. I use VMware Pro and multiple guest machines and connections always work. I will continue to think about this. – John Sep 27 '23 at 18:56
  • @john Thanks, the question is specifically what is Windows 11 looking for to verify if the internet connection is working. I can resolve the underlying issue, I can't find what Windows is doing to determine if the internet connection is working. – Appleoddity Sep 27 '23 at 18:59
  • It may be worthwhile to set up as Bridged to get Windows 11 installed and then switch back – John Sep 27 '23 at 18:59
  • @John after completing the windows install, I can see that it is HTTPS inspection that is probably causing the problem. There is not a valid certificate on the VM guest and websites are coming up with a security warning. – Appleoddity Sep 27 '23 at 19:02
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    Does this answer your question? Windows 10 falsely reports no internet – music2myear Sep 27 '23 at 20:04
  • There's lots of questions on this site that reference the Windows connection tests. I've linked one. – music2myear Sep 27 '23 at 20:05
  • I am trying to find why Windows 11 does this. I installed a Windows 10 VM in VMware Workstation, set it up, activated it and it runs (as a VM 24x7) . I am wondering why Windows 11 is so different. I assume your host machine has UEFI, Secured Boot and TPM V2 . – John Sep 27 '23 at 22:53
  • @Appleoddity did you check if you can access the text file under the two URLs I wrote down in my answer? – Albin Sep 28 '23 at 05:05

1 Answers1

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Windows checks two URLs to verify the internet connection:

www.msftncsi.com
www.msftconnecttest.com

here it tries to access the file ncsi.txt. If a connection can be established Windows will recognize the machine to be connected to the internet.

Albin
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