I’m really hoping someone here has a suggestion that will work. I spent several hours trying to troubleshoot and fix the issue with no luck. If I can’t find a solution, I don’t see any way around a drive format and OS re-install.
Here’s what happened:
I had noticed that Private Internet Access wasn’t showing in the system tray as it normally does. That’s a bit of a problem, because checking the system tray is where I make sure my VPN is connected and change servers as necessary. I Googled the issue and tried simply closing and re-opening the program. It was now back in the system tray, but when I brought it up, it’s frozen and only showing a logo, a loading circle, and an option to close the program that doesn’t seem to work. That’s a bigger problem because I had set up PIA so that I couldn’t use my browser without a VPN connection, just in case it disconnected for whatever reason. I was still connected to the internet and able to use Steam, but couldn’t use my browser.
Re-booted the PC ad still had the same issue, so I Googled it too and decided to uninstall/re-install PIA.
This is where everything went completely left. I found the uninstaller .exe in the program files, ran it, and then my internet connection was broken.
I went through a seemingly endless cycle of running the Windows troubleshooter, Googling the issue it returned, running fix suggestions, and rebooting to find it still broken and trying again.
The Windows Troubleshooter returned various issues after each attempt. The very first was “DNS server not responding”, where I ran a DNS flush in command prompt among other things. After that, it said “Ethernet doesn’t have valid IP configuration”. I ran more fixes like IP reset and reboot. “Problems found, Possible Solution: Networking Reset.” Run that, reboot. “Troubleshooter couldn’t identify the issue”. Reboot.
After every attempt and reboot, the troubleshooter seems to return a different answer randomly out of the last three: no valid IP, try Networking Reset, and couldn’t identify issue.
I’m at my wit’s end. I’ve tried at least twenty different solutions and run more command prompt lines in two hours that I had in the rest of my life combined to no avail.
I’m really hoping someone here has a suggestion that will work to save me from having to reinstall my entire OS.
EDIT: After pretty much giving up hope, I decided to try something stupid, just for shits and giggles. Even though every troubleshooting page I could find explicitly advised against it.
I downloaded the installer exe for PIA from another PC, transferred it to mine via flash drive, and re-installed the VPN.
Ran the Windows Troubleshooter after and lo and behold, it automatically fixed any remaining issues and my internet suddenly works again.
When all else fails and it can’t make things worse, no harm in trying a bad idea. Hell, occasionally it even works.
I’m leaving this up in the hopes that it’ll help someone in the future.
Edit2: Was thinking about this recently and I’m pretty sure that what happened was that when I uninstalled PIA because of the tray glitch, it bricked my connection because I had previously set options to stop the PC from being able to connect without the VPN on (just in case of a connection issue to prevent accidentally getting caught using torrents) and I didn’t think to turn that off before uninstalling.
I assume the uninstaller failed to reset connection defaults (it really should though) and because of that Windows couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
When I reinstalled PIA, Windows troubleshooter worked after either because I was able to connect to the VPN or the install script did what the uninstaller failed to and reset the connection defaults.