Appears anti-virus software settings may have been problem afterall. Who knows. Just thought I would share.
I don’t use VPN with Brave but I do with other browsers. Got the idea that my VPN may be interfering from this post: "SITENAME" DNS address could not be found. Diagnosing the problem. DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE - #3 by jumpingjax
Opened Firefox, opened anti-virus dashboard, and turned VPN on to reset. Started getting issues with Firefox. Called anti-virus tech support. They walked me through resetting VPN and changing wi-fi security settings per VPN in the anti-virus software. Rebooted computer and problems with Firefox resolved. So… settings/conflicts with anti-virus, VPN, and wi-fi may have been the underlying issue for unexpected results in other browsers.
I would give you more detail but I really didn’t understand what was going on and why I was enabling/disabling different things. All got very confusing and just followed instructions given and left trying to understand by the wayside.