At some point in the last few months, my search engine of choice, Google, stopped working on my laptop. I normally use Internet Explorer and Edge for browsing, but also have Chrome and Firefox installed as well. It was not only Google that didn’t work, but also Youtube failed to load. The error I got is when trying to access either site, is shown below – totally unhelpful.
At the time I first saw it, I found that I could access other sites, so it was not a computer issue. I found that using Firefox and Chrome, with Google and Youtube and everything worked fine. So for the moment, I let it be as I had other work that needed to be done. Tonight though I thought I’d dig into it some more and find out what was going on. I had of course already scanned my computer for virus and malware with nothing found, so I knew that was not the culprit.
I found reference here to the issue. It seems that a recent update (December 2016) to my Windows 10 installation has caused it to fail. Furthermore it looks that if I disable TLS 1.2 within IE that I can “fix” the problem.
How can I disable TLS 1.2 in Internet Explorer?
Open IE – then go to the Internet Options menu and then select the Advanced tab.
Scroll right down to the bottom and you will see the check box for Use TLS 1.2 enabled as you can see below
Remove the check mark and select OK. Close IE and reopen it and you can now get to Google, Youtube etc.
Making the change in the IE settings also resolved the issue in Edge as well.
It looks like this issue appeared and is fixed in later Windows 10 builds. I’m currently running the Slow ring Insider level and am on build 14986. This is apparently fixed for those on the Fast ring or build 15025 or later. So if you have this issue you can either disable TLS 1.2 like I did, or move to the Fast ring, update and then move back to the slow ring. For now, I’ll work with this fix.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has released an update that causes this problem.
Personally I don’t think Microsoft have a viable nor sustainable approach to a modern web browser. Edge is tied to Windows 10 CB and CBB only, with a fragmented feature set tied to whichever branch you’re currently on. No ability to run it on LTSB nor on Remote Desktop servers, so anyone using these has to use either Chrome or Firefox for a modern browser experience. Given Microsoft’s successful approach to Office everywhere I’m really surprised they’re not doing this with Edge, especially if they want to recapture browser market share, something they’re never going to achieve with their current strategy.
As a result IE gets minimal attention required from me to keep legacy access working (i.e. AU govt sites), and no attention to Edge at all given it’s a niche toy.
Thanks! This worked for me. Just tried it this morning.
Tried, Logged out and Logged in and it’s working
Thanks for article.