New Windows 11 24H2 fail kills the internet for some users

2 weeks ago 7

Senior businessman punching a hole through his laptop screen, furious and enraged

(Image credit: TeodorLazarev / Shutterstock)

The long-awaited major Windows 11 update (version 24H2) was supposed to bring shiny new features and security updates, but it also seems to be bringing headaches for a lot of people as well - and some users are complaining that their internet connections aren’t working after installing the update.

That’s right: in addition to issues like the dreaded blue screen of death crashes, a glitch making mouse cursors vanish, and worse, filling up your hard drive with files you can’t even delete, 24H2 might now impact your internet connection if you install the update. Windows Report, which broke the news, refers to a Microsoft Community forum post where a user describes encountering this problem on multiple devices.

Even if they could connect, some devices were still unable to access the internet, whether they were connected by Wi-Fi or by cable. Adding to the confusion, the user claims to have seen strange IP address numbers, starting with ‘169…’ which are unusual, as they usually start with ‘192’ and indicated that there was no network connection.

Basically, it seems this resulted in these PCs “thinking” they’re connected, but in fact not actually being so. The poster goes on to explain that they even tried updating and modifying software that could affect internet connectivity, such as drivers, firmware, and resetting network settings, and didn’t see much luck. Multiple people echoed the first poster’s complaints, and now PCWorld is reporting that it’s an issue that’s affecting both private computers and Windows 11 PCs connected to servers.

It appears that for many users, this problem was triggered by the update as their connection seemed fine before installing it.

Get a move on, Microsoft

The situation doesn’t look great right now, but the silver lining is that there is a workaround that will hopefully do the trick until Microsoft puts out an update resolving the problem. If your internet connection is down after installing this update, you’ll have to roll it back by uninstalling it, reverting your PC to the previous version of Windows 11 you had installed.

This looks to have helped fix the problem and restored internet connectivity for most people. PCWorld recommends that you check out the Community forum post to see if your experience matches up, and then you can follow its guidance about how to roll back a problematic Windows update.

The reason why I echo this suggestion is because it’s not totally foolproof, so you’ll have to decide yourself whether or not to roll back the update. Apparently, this workaround hasn’t resolved the issue for some devices, and it might be worth investigating further what solutions worked for others on the forum if you’re still affected.

I expect that Microsoft will acknowledge this shortly, and hopefully release an update addressing this issue - especially as Windows 11 24H2 is supposed to be a major, exciting update that will get people to upgrade, and embarrassing and frustrating problems like this certainly won’t help.