A Fix for a VPN Internet Killswitch on Windows

A VPN is a nice tool for securing your internet connection and changing your virtual geographic location. VPNs are useful especially if you are using a public WIFI in a hotel or an airport, visiting a country with not so free internet such as China or doing activities that might get you into a trouble due to the political climate in your country. Now, some VPN providers offer an internet killswitch as a part of their Windows app. And sometimes this option will literally kill your internet for good. πŸ˜…

The common symptoms are that you can no longer connect to any network; wifi, ethernet or mobile. The connection seems to be established, but you won't be able to browse any sites at all. And reboot all you might, the issue seems to be there. Uninstalling the VPN app does nothing at all either. 😱

Disable Internet Killswitch for Good

The way most of the internet killswitches work is that they configure a rule in Windows firewall. This is the reason why nothing seems to fix the issue and restore your internet connection. Windows firewall will continue blocking your internet connection regardless what you do. Luckily, this is something that is easy to fix. 😎

Find Windows firewall on your start menu.

You should see a setting that seems to be blocking all the traffic. 🚫 It might have a generated name that consists of random characters or it might have your VPN provider's name. All in all, it is the rule that blocks all outbound connections.

By deleting the rule, you should get online immediately. So there you go, your internet connection fully restored. ☺️