Wrong time/date, connected to WiFi yet can’t connect to internet at all

To be clear, laptop was used a couple weeks ago and all was fine. Used it today and it booted up with the wrong date/time (it was off by several months and it thought it was 4am when it was 9pm).

• I did attempt to fix that immediately by checking time and date settings when I realized it was all as it should be and yet still displayed incorrect times.
• that’s when I went to safari to look this issue up on google and I ran into the second issue.

I am connected to WiFi but cannot access any website.

• I tried connecting via phone hotspot and same. Able to connect to hotspot but no website access.

I did attempt the basics of fixing.

• restart both laptop and router
• forget WiFi network and reconnect
• messed with just about all settings within advanced tab of WiFi. (DNS and all - I suppose I could have missed a potential solution in this area as this would be my biggest weakness)

At one point I was ok with a full factory reset - nothing on here I would regret losing or isn’t backed up. Unfortunately, once it came time to enter my iCloud password to confirm this, the laptop could not reach out and confirm password so it was at a standstill.

I understand there is a way to bypass that but I’m afraid I would need to reinstall macOS and I don’t have a way of doing that at this point in time.

thanks in advance for the help!