Recently, an annoyed user complained about how Microsoft had allegedly forcefully upgraded their system from Windows 10 to 11 without their consent. While moving forward to Windows 11 at the moment is important since Windows 10 is no longer supported (assuming you have not enrolled on to ESU), there can be real problems users face after the upgrade as one of them discovered today.
The affected user recently upgraded their system to Windows 11 25H2 from 23H2 and claims that their Dot3Svc folder, which contains essential policies and settings for NAC (Network Access Control), got wiped of its contents which means they can"t connect to the internet via wired means as the authentication via 802.1x no longer works for them.
For anyone wondering, the Windows Wired Auto Config service (dot3svc) in Windows 11/10 is a system service that manages IEEE 802.1X authentication on wired or Ethernet connections. The user wrote:
Is there any update on Microsoft acknowledging/fixing the issue that is still plaguing our Windows 11 upgrades? ... This occurred from 10 to 11, but is now also occurring when updating from one yearly release to another (23H2 to 25H2). In each case, the dot3svc folder is wiped of its contents and the computer is off the network until a gpupdate is run with it on the network."
If you are wondering why the person says "still plaguing", the issue is not new as it first originated on Windows 11 24H2 or 23H2, when users noted that in-place upgrading from Windows 10 to 11 was leading to such 802.1x authentication problems, which meant they no longer could access the internet via Ethernet.
This is a bit ironically funny considering Microsoft wants users to be connected to the internet when they install Windows 11, but then immediately afterwards, they found themselves shut out of it.
There are multiple threads online documenting the issue though it seems Microsoft never publicly acknowledged the problem on its open Windows health dashboard website. However, the company appeared to have fixed it with the November 2024 and December 2024 Windows 11 Patch Tuesdays (via Reddit).
Still for anyone wondering how to resolve this issue, the only thing that seems to work is to connect to a functioning wireless port and run a gpupdate, which essentially updates the Group Policy settings to restore the correct policies.
Source: Reddit (link1, link2, link3), Microsoft forums (link1, link2)