Good Windows support forums/sites?

Originally Posted by rokytnji https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/ is a good one, another one https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

Thank you for actually answering the question.

Personally, I don't frequent any windows forums so I wouldn't know the good ones from the bad ones, but I know some forums that have a different (IT-related) focus than operating systems; e.g. Servers, Security etc.

Originally Posted by ondoho Thank you for actually answering the question.

Yes, that's a good point. And I'm not the only one that was bad for not doing that, for which I apologize.

Yes, I tried pretty much all the suggestions here, making sure every old setting was gone, updating drivers, resetting the network through the windows troubleshooter, etc.
I threw hardware at the problem, bought a cheap modem and router and swapped those in place of the ISP's and it works fine now. Whatever Microsoft does differently with networking these days aparently the ISP router didn't like.
I'll go to the suggested forums and post the other windows 10 issues.

Sounds like a dns configuration problem or possibly a firewall rule?

I would have looked at nslookup and ping outputs. Generally if a ping to e.g. 8.8.8.8 succeeds and an nslookup fails, it's almost always going to be dns related.

For Windows, it can help to configure ipv4 manually with a static address and with the gateway and primary dns both set to the router's IP address. If that doesn't do it, then set both the primary and secondary dns servers manually from the windows client.

Windows also uses a dns resolver cache, by default and restarting that and clearing the cache (see ipconfig command usage) can be resolve some problems.

Yeah, I tried all that, manually setting, using google's. The DNS issue is because it couldn't reach any DNS servers, ping/traceroute, etc, be it the isp's or googles.

PC Advisor forums https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/forum/

Below the general latest postings are several forums including Windows, and the more general Tech Advisor one includes Windows questions. Started as an adjunct to PC Advisor magazine in the early 2000s. For all levels of knowledge. Chances are a forum search will find your answer, and if not, a question will. There may well also be relevant articles, and the Download section has reputable links.

(Asking Microsoft isn't possible for ordinary users, hence the forums!).

How annoying to find it was the modem's fault after all that (I hate it when I spend precious time troubleshooting and it was a simple hardware fault!).

In the forums I've looked at re many connection problems over the years, ISP-supplied modems have often turned out to be the cause of a problem. They tend to lack power, and the ISP has usually hobbled the user access to settings.

If you run into connection/networking problems again, you might find these forums worth a look, especially the Nets & Comms, Broadband and Wireless ones (and maybe others, e.g. Open Source and Windows Devices). You may not have heard of them as Boards.ie is an Irish site (most members live here in the ROI), but even when I'm in the UK I usually go straight to Boards (rather than trawling through countless simplistic web search results, mostly from a particular ISP or Microsoft). There are some very knowledgeable people there, the Irish ISPs being the only difference from UK forums (not that ISP problems and workarounds seem to differ much from country to country). The site is well moderated (mainly by users), and easy to load (I could access it even when I was stuck with a sub-dialup connection).
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=5

The first rule of paying for stuff -- ask the people you're paying for stuff!
I was being awkward, a little, in my first post but please take verry good bote of who you give money to for what. The various MS help should have been able to work with you, since you paid them, and you could let your relatives know how much they paid them. The ISP should rewfund you a few months.
Either way, why were you paying for something you are not getting?