I've ran into this issue and the problem was with hotspot provider. The hotspot provider had a whitelist of networks that didn't require the guest to be authenticated. The IP address that www.msftconnecttest.com and msftconnecttest.com resolved to matched with one of the networks on their whitelist.   Some knowledge about msftconnecttest if you are not aware. When Windows detects a network connection, it performs a test to detect the properties of the network. The network traffic is getting redirected to msftconnecttest and this is by design. The network icon on the task bar will show a symbol and will say either No connectivity, Limited Internet access, or Internet Access.   When the Pulse Client dectects a hotspot, it opens an embedded browser. The first URL it's going to is www.msftconnecttest.com. Since the IP address of www.msftconnecttest.com was on the that whitelist, the traffic wasn't being redirected to the captive portal for the guest to authenticate. I worked with the hotspot provider and they updated the configuration on their end to require guest authentication to msftconnecttest.   Every hotspot is different and we can't troubleshoot them all. ... View more