Windows 10: Windows defender firewall is blocking all after cumulative update?

Hi all, This started this morning after I let my laptop do it's cumulative update. I don't know if it's relevant, but it had to be updated and restarted twice as the update was still shown as pending after the first update and restart. Model is Acer Helios 300 2017 model.

The symptoms and steps:

• Wifi working, updated windows and restarted, took laptop to school - didn't check wifi before leaving was in a hurry and had no reason to assume it wasn't working.
• Arrived at school and couldn't connect to the free wifi. All networks were shown, but connecting would take a really long time then just say connected, no internet access.
• As the school's had problems before, I got out my phone and turned on personal hotspot, exactly the same thing - long time to connect, then said 'connected no internet'.
• Ran troubleshooting on the connection and it said "Wifi doesn't have a valid IP configuration"
• Went to the device settings and made sure IPv4 &6 were set to obtain IP and DNS automatically and restarted, no dice.
• Tried Code: ipconfig /flushdns[/quote] to no avail.
• Googled the issue and then ran the following commands:
  Code: netsh winsock reset netsh int ip reset netsh int tcp reset[/quote] and rebooted.
• Tried the following commands:
  Code: ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew[/quote] as all the internet guides said, and got my first issue - both said all adaptors had no media
• At this point I tried connecting via bluetooth and USB to my phone, with the same result as before - 'connected, no internet' & troubleshooting said "no valid IP configuration"
• I now went to services and checked all the services recommended in other "no valid IP configuration" threads here were running.
• I now reset my network settings, deleted my devices and tried various iterations of the previous steps several times and tried a third wifi network before giving up and heading home, assuming at home I could manually set the IP and DNS and use the ethernet.
• When I got home, I plugged my laptop into the router via ethernet and got the same message "connected, no internet", trouble shooting said "no valid IP configuration" as before. I tried manually setting the IP4 settings for the home network, still no dice.
• I was now about ready to reset windows as I figured I'd ruled out hardware and didn't want to waste anymore time, when I restarted one last time and this time Windows troubleshooting said it was a problem with windows firewall rule - and what looked like gibberish or maybe hexadecimal?
• Turned off windows firewall and my internet now works on all adaptors and networks, but if I turn it back on then all pages say "no connection".
• Tried to restore windows defender firewall to defaults, issue persists.

I do have kaspersky internet installed, but it's not allowed to auto run and wasn't running at the time of the update as I always turn it off before running OS or major application updates & it hasn't been turned bakc on since to keep it ruled out. I regularly turn it off when gaming or whatever then turn it back on afterwards and have never had a problem with it being turned on or off before, nor have I ever touched windows defender firewall settings before today.

I guess I want to sort out the fault with windows defender naturally, but also confirm with you guys that this is the bug and also understand if it's something I did that I could not do again, hence why I shared everything that happened.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Jeff

:)

 

Windows Firewall blocking websites

I have blocked IP addresses, e.g. 255.255.255.255, not URLs, e.g. somewebsite.co m.

As far as unblocking, look at your Windows Firewall rules. Do you see anything that is blocked? If you do, click on the Scope tab and see what is listed there.

 

Best free AV and firewall

Can Windows Firewall block outgoing connections yet? If not, it's one step above useless.

Look into Online Armor for a free firewall.

 

Windows Firewall blocking websites

Windows Firewall can't block specific websites, only port numbers (HTTP uses 80 or 8080). More likely, Windows Firewall is blocking the Windows Update Service or some other critical update application and/or port number that prevents updates from happening.

As twilyth pointed out, this is abnormal and likely caused by some form of malware. If you even found a the offending rule in Windows Firewall, the malware will likely put it back to the way it was within seconds.

Does http://download.microsoft.com open for you? It should redirect a few times and end up at: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/default.aspx

Have you tried to ping download.microsoft.com? I did it a few times so you should be able to get a response off it.