Brave killing my internet connection when open

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1

Description of the issue: As soon as I launch Brave, internet connection on my PC is almost completely killed.
How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Open Brave browser.

  2. Notice every app disconnecting (discord, steam, online game)

  3. Trying to perform a speedtest but unable to even start it.

Expected result: Regular behavior.

Brave Version( check About Brave): 1.86.148

Additional Information:

Hi all, something really weird is going on on my desktop. Whenever I open Brave it nearly completely kills my internet connection.

I just got back from work and started my pc, opened Brave and tried to open YouTube. Nothing. It just keeps loading. Tried opening other pages, nothing as well. Eventually landed on Speedtest, couldn’t connect to any server because the latency was too high. A second attempt showed me “A socket error occurred during the download test. A firewall could be blocking the connection or the server might be having some issues.”

Thought it was a problem with my VPN (Surfshark) but the same happened when I disconnected from it. Thought it was my router, so tried resetting it. Didn’t help. Nothing wrong with the Wi-Fi either, easily get 1 Gbps up and down on my phone. Restarted my PC a couple of times, checked ethernet cable, nothing helped.

Then, I open up LibreWolf and… no issues. Everything loads instantly, Speedtest gives me 1 Gbps up and down. Until… I open Brave. Opening Brave instantly killed my connection on LibreWolf as well, dropping do 0 mbps on Speedtest as soon as I try to load a page in Brave. With Brave, open, nothing loads in LibreWolf either. But everything loads as soon as I close Brave.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on? I didn’t have any issue whatsoever last night. I’m on 1.86.148, I updated on February 4th and did not have any kind of issues until today.

I’ve tried reinstalling the browser to no avail. Tried deleting my browser data and launching a new profile, but didn’t help either. Also noticing the browser now takes forever (10-15 seconds) to even open.

2

You’re not using Brave VPN or any other VPN extension in the browser?

3

No, I’ve only ever used the Surfshark VPN desktop app. I’ve used this combo for years (Brave + Surfshark) and never had issues.

4

I was going to ask about Brave’s own VPN but if it’s not the case, I’m honestly not sure what’s going on there. I have never had that happen, but certainly hope to see a solution for you. Quite the oddball one, it’s almost like Brave’s VPN is trying to kick in when you don’t use it, otherwise I can’t see how else it’s essentially tearing down the TCP/IP stack like that.

5

Are there any extensions installed in the browser? If so can you please try disabling them and testing again?

Also, can you please try downloading the Brave Beta build and see if it launches and runs normally (you can uninstall/delete once the test is performed if you’d like)?

6

I had previously tried disabling all addons, as well as trying out private window. Did not help. I fully uninstalled Brave and I installed the Beta build and it launches, but it’s doing the exact same thing as the regular browser (slow startup, kills the connection, won’t load any pages in Brave and kills my connection in LibreWolf as well).

7

Do you have any anti-virus software running on your machine at this time?

8

Yes, the Surfshark one. I tried quitting the Surfshark desktop app (which I assumed would also stop the antivirus) but that did not help.

9

Can you ensure that the SurfShark AV process is also closed/not running to make sure it’s not flagging connections made from Brave for some reason? In the meantime I’ll ask the team about this because if it’s not the VPN and/or AV software then I have no idea why this would be happening – especially since it’s happening on both the stable and Beta builds.

Additionally, when this happens, does your Windows system still show your internet connection as active/stable/working?

10

Okay, I seem to have fixed the problem (still don’t know what caused it). After testing the Brave Beta, I wanted to install the regular version again to test with the antivirus. Instead of using the regular uninstaller, I used Revo Uninstaller to uninstall Brave Beta and delete all remnant Brave files and registries. Then I installed regular Brave again, and the issue was gone. It started instantly, and no longer kills my connection.

Unfortunately this means I have no idea what caused it, but at least it’s gone (for now). I will report back in the coming days in case the problem returns. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it!

11

Okay after some testing there is still something very wrong here. Brave doesn’t fully kill my connection anymore, but:

When I try to perform a speedtest on LibreWolf with Brave open it fails the upload test due to “A socket error occurred during the download test. A firewall could be blocking the connection or the server might be having some issues.” If I close Brave and restart the test, it passes the upload test just fine. Brave itself passes it just fine as well. I open Brave again and start the test and it fails.

12

If you launch Brave and just start browsing, does it connect to websites as expected?

13

@Rillant safe to assume you’re also at https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/s/hrt6jizl0T for this issue?

I know you mentioned having cleared the registry when you removed with Revo, but I’m not entirely sure that that would’ve gotten everything. Especially if you were focused just on Brave.

What I really would like to have you test and I don’t think I saw either location, is for you to use Chrome. If you have it installed and open, does the same thing happen? I’m trying to emphasize this because everything that we’ve looked at has been different release channels of Brave and Librewolf.

I am thinking that this is going to be because of Surfshark and a registry it may have created. Or as indicated on the Reddit thread, that it be some driver added.

Another thing you could test is to actually completely remove (not just disable) Surfshark and see if issue happens.

14

Yes, it works perfectly fine now as it did yesterday.

15

Yes, that’s me! I will test the things you mentioned and report back. Thanks again for your input.

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16

Sounds good. But I am a bit more confused now after seeing you mention it’s working perfectly fine now. I mean, if it was DNS or something that cleared up, might be good. But to confirm I’m seeing things right, you’re saying it’s only happening when both browsers are open at the same time? Otherwise no problem?

17

Open a command prompt cmd, and try this:

In the command prompt, type ping google.com -t, then open each browser one at a time, and see if the requests start timing out at all.

If requests do start timing out, was it Brave?

If the requests do NOT time out when Brave is open, re-open Brave, but CTRL+C the ping that’s running. Now re-run ping google.com -t, does it still ping, or does it now give an error?

(Starting to wonder if something’s up with WinSock.)

18

Haven’t had the chance to test anything yet, but to clarify:

After the Revo Uninstall and clean install:

Only LibreWolf open: no issues, speedtest goes perfectly well
Only Brave open: no issues, speedtest goes perfectly well
Both browsers open, speedtest on LibreWolf: socket error on upload test
Both browsers open, speedtest on Brave: no issues, speedtest goes perfectly well

I was able to repeat this 4 or 5 times in a row.

19

Right now I have no issues with timing out anymore after I did a full uninstall with Revo and clean install. However, while I was still diagnosing issue I had timeout issues on everything. For example, I was downloading stuff with JDownloader2 and as soon as I opened Brave, I started getting errors because connections were timing out on there. Same with Discord. Not sure if this info helps, I can still try your suggestion when I’m behind my dekstop again.

20

Reporting back to say that… I can’t do any testing because the issue seems to be gone completely. Which is great, except for the fact we still don’t really know what caused it.

I will keep monitoring things the coming days and report back if anything happens again/if I’m able to actually test some of your suggestions.

Again, thanks to everyone that contributed to the thread and made suggestions!

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