For the last few weeks, I noticed that only my laptop does not connect to any internet connection – home Wifi router, ADSL modem via ethernet cable, USB data card and mobile 3G internet. The laptop would get connected with the USB data card and mobile phone, but not load any data. The same devices / methods work for other devices like my mobile phone and desktop PC. Clearly, this was an issue with the laptop alone.
The laptop would give a “This webpage is not available because DNS lookup failed……” error in Chrome. Firefox also displayed an error message, though not with as many details.
As anyone in my situation would do, I tried searching around on Google for solutions. Most solutions were aimed at fixing DNS errors.
Pinging websites on the command line failed, as did IP addresses – thereby ruling out DNS issues. A ping to 127.0.0.1 worked, thereby ruling out a damaged NIC (networking hardware).
I started going backwards to see what action specifically caused the internet blackout. I narrowed it down to a CCleaner cleaning action. Searching online revealed that I was not the only person who encountered problems with connectivity after running a registry scan and fix with CCleaner. System restore was one obvious solution, but unfortunately I did not have a restore point that was old enough. Many forum users had even gone so far as to reinstall Windows just to get rid of the net issue.
I thought of using registry fixing software available online, but not before trying CCleaner itself one last time. Running the registry “scan and fix errors”, then rebooting the system worked.
Perhaps, my analysis that CCleaner caused the registry corruption leading to connectivity issues is wrong. CCleaner lives to tell the tale on my system….