When staying at a public place, such as a hotel, a client’s laptop could connect to the Wi-Fi but was unable to perform anything over the Internet.  For example, trying to browse anywhere would provide an error message like this:

 This site can’t be reached
 www.msftconnecttest.com took too long to respond.

Windows sometimes performs an action called “Active Probing” to check if a path to the Internet exists before it even tries to send traffic over it. This “probing” involves sending an HTTP request to www.msftconnecttest.com and seeing if it returns a proper response. If it doesn’t, this error is displayed and Internet traffic is blocked.

Public WiFi often uses a captive portal that displays a page for people to authenticate themselves in some way, like a hotel room number, before its DNS will resolve anything. Thus, www.msftconnecttest.com will provide no IP address, even for the captive portal page.

We can disable the “Active Probing” here:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet

Change the value for EnableActiveProbing from 1 to 0 to disable it and it should start working immediately.

As a “security enhancement,” a computer running Windows 11 24H2 will not be able to access an SMB share that has been configured to not require a password (i.e., guest or public folder with password not required.)

Here’s how to disable the feature:

Using GPEDIT.MSC:

• >Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates
  > Network > Lanman Workstation
• Enable the setting for “Enable insecure guest logons
• Apply and restart the computer

USING REGEDIT:

• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters.
• If the AllowInsecureGuestAuth entry does not exist, add it as a DWORD (32-bit) Value
• Set the value of AllowInsecureGuestAuth to 1.
• Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer.