*[12/16/2013 - Updates below]*  

*[12/20/2013 - Updates below]*

Bear with me, this isn't the normal "limited connection" sort of question, I promise.

When I am at the office and on the LAN, my Win8.1 laptop assures me that my resulting LAN connection is limited:

![Win 8.1 saying the connection is limited](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3weQ.png) ![Network properties saying no Internet Access](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6t8qs.png)

**Yet I have still have network -- and Internet -- connectivity**. I can connect to everything without issue. I get a DHCP address, DNS works, I can surf, ping and work to my heart's desire.

![Connectivity evidence](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I2Iuk.png) 

Problem is that some of the Office 2013 stuff balks at being useful. OneNote, for instance, sees that Limited Connectivity status and won't even try to sync to my Notebooks on SkyDrive. Outlook gets a little silly too. Thus, I'd like to fix this limited-but-not-really-limited issue once and for all.

I have tried the following:

* Swapped cables (no change)
* Plugged in directly to an office switch (no change)
* Plugged into LAN side of our firewall (no change)
* Confirmed the several dozen other machines in the office have no similar issue
* Plugged other machines into my office jack / switch port -- they were still fine.
* Updated Ethernet card driver to latest version, to older version, to generic MS version (no change)
* Assigned static IP and DNS servers instead of DHCP

If I go anywhere else (home, client sites) and plug in my laptop to local LAN I don't get the limited status. So there's something here at the office that my laptop doesn't like.

How do I figure out what that might be?

---

**12/16/2013 - Updates**

If I reboot to Safe Mode, the network connection is healthy and shows Internet access. If I then reboot back to Normal mode, it remains healthy for (apparently) the rest of the day or until I use it elsewhere and then return to the office.

I've created an additional local user account, no change. If the connection is limited for me it remains limited for that local user account.

---

**12/16/2013 - Updates**

Booting to Safe Mode and then back seems to fix the issue for several days. Thus, the slow down on updates. But it broke again today, so here's follow-up on some comments below.

* msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt resolves fine.
* pinging dns.msftncsi.com resolves to 131.107.255.255

However! When checking the Windows 7 Network Awareness [link](http://digitalexplorations.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/windows-7-network-awareness/) and registry setting, I found that EnableActiveProbing was set to 0, not the default 1 (enabled). I enabled that, disabled/re-enabled the NIC and I have a healthy network again. 

So now the mystery is: What is changing that EnableActiveProbing registry key?