Network Protocols

ellisol said:

This post is in reference to original topic "One or more network protocols are missing on this computer".

Background
I got a Dell laptop from a customer that after a Windows 10 update the networking stopped working. Using the troubleshooting gives:

"One or more network protocols are missing on this computer"

and more detail shows:

"Windows Sockets Registry Entries Required for Network Connectivity are missing".

I did many hours of Googling and tried all the netsh commands, Fix TCPIP programs, etc. The laptop was using Defender for virus protection but when I went into network properties I noticed the following item:

Avast! Firewall Driver

I downloaded and ran the avastclear.exe program and after it did its thing and rebooted my network was working again.

I hope this helps someone and save them time.

Just an FYI: Windows Defender should not be utilized as it's not even remotely reliable, not to mention it continues to score horrendously when compared to other antivirus/anti-malware software.

After all that I found that by resetting the router and the Mycloud device together, everything is now working.
However I would not have worked this out unless I had gone into the router admin and found that while the device was recognized, it was not seen to be running.
Thanks for the tip JW0914

JW0914 said:

No problem. Generally, if you have a network issue, it's best to start from the most basic possible problem and work your way up in complexity. For most home networks, especially if it's a case of it used to work, but now doesn't, generally rebooting the router, the device with the issue, and sometimes PC, the problem can be fixed.

In case other users read the last thread page prior to posting, the network protocols error may or may not occur on certain Win 10 builds, however, it is not indicative of an actual network problem.

• From what can be pieced together, the educated consensus is Windows is seeing a missing registry value it believes should exist (but actually shouldn't exist)
  
  • It then interprets this to mean a specific group policy option has been set, even though the aforementioned policy is correctly set to not configured (it's default, and correct, value).
  
  

Incidentally, I spoke to the Western Digital helpline for 90 minutes, and Microsoft's helpline for just over an hour.
Both services did their best, and the Microsoft technician even took control of my machine for 50 minutes but could solve nothing. I would have thought that the bug that creates this error message in their system should have been well known to them, but not so it seems. Operating systems are so complex...

Hwalker1 said:

Incidentally, I spoke to the Western Digital helpline for 90 minutes, and Microsoft's helpline for just over an hour.
Both services did their best, and the Microsoft technician even took control of my machine for 50 minutes but could solve nothing. I would have thought that the bug that creates this error message in their system should have been well known to them, but not so it seems. Operating systems are so complex...

Tech Support is only as knowledgeable as the documentation they have access to, so unless the tech support reps either encountered the issue, or happened upon a forum thread, if their documentation doesn't mention it, they don't know.

While tech support reps do receive training, they're generally not reps with degrees in IT or Networking, nor have they, generally, received any advanced training in either.

• Some companies do offer tech support reps in their call centers that do have degrees in IT and/or Networking, but those are generally corporate to corporate businesses that sell only to corporations, such as Sophos. Regular, non-business, consumers can also benefit from that level of expertise via services, software, or OSes those companies offer for free use to non-businesses.

Sophos, for example, easily offers one of the best, if not the best, Unified Threat Management router OSes [Sophos UTM], of which is offered for free to individuals with a 50 DHCP IP limit [even more awesome, the OS is the exact version licensed to enterprise customers] VMware also has a similar structure, offering VM software that's licensed to corporations for free to individuals.

My issue is the complete opposite the OP's. Hoping someone can help me. All other devices in the house (iPad, phones, other laptops etc.) can connect to the wireless. However the desktop PC that is connected via Ethernet cannot get connected to the Internet (except via Wireless as it also has a built-in wireless router). I am getting the "one or more network protocols are missing on this computer" error as well. Please help!!

CycloneSteve said:

My issue is the complete opposite the OP's. Hoping someone can help me. All other devices in the house (iPad, phones, other laptops etc.) can connect to the wireless. However the desktop PC that is connected via Ethernet cannot get connected to the Internet (except via Wireless as it also has a built-in wireless router). I am getting the "one or more network protocols are missing on this computer" error as well. Please help!!

Since you reported the posts informing you that reading is a skill many seem to forget they have, I'll take a more direct approach... your issue is addressed 3 posts up. Had you bothered to take the time to read the last page of the thread prior to posting, you would have had your issue fixed by now.

Open Device Manager, open "Network Adapters", right click on "Ethernet Controller"...."Disable" then "Enable".

JW0914 said:

Since you reported the posts informing you that reading is a skill many seem to forget they have, I'll take a more direct approach... your issue is addressed 3 posts up. Had you bothered to take the time to read the last page of the thread prior to posting, you would have had your issue fixed by now.

Ummm....I didn't report anything but thanks for the tip. If you had shared that with me earlier instead of being pretentious things would have gone a little smoother.
In any case the issue was resolved without me needing to do anything.

Just to add to this topic, here is my experience. Both my laptop and home desktop installed a windows update a few days ago just before I left for work. I was then unable to connect to the internet in two hotels and running the troubleshooter gave the missing network protocols message. It turns out that the home desktop also has this error now. After a couple of days trying to find a solution, I had a look at the windows update history and the last update was 1511. I have just uninstalled this update on my laptop, restarted and lo and behold I can now connect to the internet again. So in my case, it definitely was caused by this update for whatever reason.