BYU Wi‑Fi Captive Portal Troubleshooting
What happened
I had used BYU Wi‑Fi just fine before, but at some point, the captive portal started acting up.
Every time I opened Edge to trigger the portal, the page would just hang. I started getting warnings like “your connection to this site isn’t secure.” I allowed it anyway, but the page would only half-load—the “Connect” button would start to show, then everything froze. Eventually, it just timed out. No response.
I tried rebooting, updating, reversing settings—nothing changed.
What I tried
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Checked DNS settings and confirmed they were set to automatic.
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Cleared the DNS cache and reset Winsock using ipconfig and netsh. Rebooted and tried neverssl.com again—still hung.
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Verified VPN and proxy were off. I wasn’t running any WireGuard tunnels, and the proxy settings were disabled.
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Disabled all browser extensions in Edge, used InPrivate mode, and retried the portal. Same result.
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Tried direct portal URLs, like captive.apple.com. It either said unsupported or “Can’t reach this page.”
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Forgot the network, reconnected, and tried again—no difference.
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Double-checked proxy settings. Automatic detection was on, manual proxy was off.
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Updated the Wi‑Fi adapter driver in Device Manager—still nothing.
At that point, I started preparing for the nuclear option: a full Network Reset and deep stack flush.
Deep dive: what comes next
Before running the reset, I learned something important. Windows needs time to uninstall and reinstall the network stack completely—adapters, services, drivers, all of it. If I reboot too soon, things can break badly. Microsoft recommends waiting about five minutes for it to finish everything under the hood.
Interrupting that process mid-reset can result in missing drivers, failed reinstalls, and total loss of network functionality.
What Network Reset actually does
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Removes and reinstalls all network adapters (physical and virtual)
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Wipes out VPN adapters like WireGuard
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Resets DNS, TCP/IP, proxy settings, and the firewall
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Gives Windows time to rebuild the entire network stack
What happened to my WireGuard VPN setup
The reset wiped the virtual network adapter and all tunnel configurations. It also removed any routing rules or firewall exceptions that had been set up.
After the reset, I had to:
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Reopen the WireGuard app
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Re-import my tunnels
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Reactivate them
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Reapply any split-tunnel, kill-switch, or firewall settings I had customized
Captive portal test URL I used
After resetting everything, I used the URL http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html to trigger the BYU portal. If the network is live and DHCP is functioning, this page should return “Success” or redirect to BYU’s login portal.
What actually fixed it
Fix #1: Full Network Reset
I went to Settings → Network & Internet → Status → Network reset.
Clicked Reset now, then waited a full 5 minutes before doing anything else.
Windows eventually rebooted on its own.
Fix #2: Deep command-line network reset
After reboot, I opened an elevated command prompt and ran:
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netsh int ip reset -
netsh advfirewall reset -
netsh winsock reset -
ipconfig /release -
ipconfig /renew -
ipconfig /flushdns
That flushed everything—old routes, DNS, firewall rules—and gave me a clean slate.
Fix #3: Reconnect and test
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Reconnected to BYU‑WiFi (forgot and re-added it)
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Reopened WireGuard, re-imported my tunnel, and activated it
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Opened Chrome (instead of Edge this time)
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Went directly to
http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html
This time, I had a valid DHCP lease in the 10.x.x.x range, DNS was automatic, and the BYU login portal finally appeared.
Optional checks I did
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Verified that I had a real IP address (not 169.254.x.x) using
ipconfig /all -
Temporarily disabled antivirus/firewall to make sure they weren’t blocking HTTP
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Also tested the portal using
http://msftconnecttest.comjust in case
Final thoughts
The full reset cleared out everything that could’ve been silently interfering with captive portal authentication—stale DNS entries, old routes, broken VPN adapters, bad proxy settings, all of it.
Once the stack was fully flushed and I used a direct trigger URL, the BYU portal finally loaded.
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