My nephew has recently gotten very into computers (having built one up from some of my spares); it’s running Windows 10 and accesses their BT Internet Home Hub via a pci wireless card. It has BT Protect installed (which I think involves some sort of McAffee application).

Recently he’s been unable to access the internet and is getting a pop up from BT Protect advising that his DNS server has been changed from the default BT DNS server, which is required by BT Protect to run. I’ve spoken to him over the telephone and we’ve checked that their BT Home Hub settings are set for to obtain the DNS server automatically and (via a BT help page for this particular error) have checked the the TCP/IP protocol attached to his wireless card also obtains it’s DNS server address automatically. Apparently his wireless card is shown as working correctly from Device Manager (although I did suggest reinstalling the drivers just in case).

I’ll probably pop over next week to have a look and wondered if there’s anything obvious I’m missing; I don’t know what may have been installed and whether anything may have change the DNS settings (although I wouldn’t know where else to check).

I might also try a Restore Point if I can’t fix it.

Any suggestions appreciated.

So what dns servers does he have? Do an ipconfig/all if they are incorrect try flushing then renew.

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ipconfig.mspx?mfr=true

Failing that and a reboot of everything turn of that BT protect crap.

Thanks, I’ll give that a try.

If you can find out what the BT DNS servers are, then try setting them explicitly instead of setting the wireless adapter to try and get them automatically.

turn off that BT protect crap.

This would be my first instinct. Anything with the word McAfee in it is going to screw up your system sooner or later, and will slow it down considerably in the meantime. Windows Defender and Malwarebytes does the job just fine.