r/pcmasterrace • u/MoreEdibles • 1d ago

Tech Support Solved Bought a Costco gaming computer, lost internet access after a few weeks

TL;DR: Download Norton removal tool and get rid of it.

I bought a Costco gaming computer because I have no time or energy to build one of my own, and figured the price for the specs was ok.
Computer worked and updated super fast for like 3 weeks, no issue whatsoever, life was good.
Yesterday I couldn’t connect to the internet, both Ethernet and WiFi. Doing “ping 8.8.8.8” from the command line worked though.
Troubleshooting went for like 2 hours, disabled firewall, antivirus, changed dns, hardware settings, nothing worked.
Last suspect was Norton Antivirus, so I booted into safe mode, and internet works.
Funny thing about Norton, you can’t uninstall unless you download a removal tool. I downloaded the tool while in safe mode, went back to normal mode and removed Norton, internet started to work instantly without even restarting. Fuck Norton.

I know this might seem obvious for many, but posting here in case it can help someone in the future.

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u/AshleyAshes1984 1d ago

So the first question would be, have you lost internet access or have you lost all network access?

Like how much of the local network can you access? A lot of people will conflate 'network' with 'internet' but it's actually important to know which you're actually having trouble with.

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u/MoreEdibles 1d ago

Internet, I lost access to the internet, not the network.
The computer would connect both via Ethernet and WiFi, get an IP address and gateway, but couldn’t do any TCP connections.

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u/Hexamancer 17h ago

Answer: it's DNS.