Laptop wifi keeps disconnecting

El Weirdo

Okay, this is the craic.

I have Fastcom fixed wireless broadband, connected to a Netgear WNR1000 wireless router.

Everything was running tickety-boo until last week when my daughter got a netbook and I tried to connect it to the wifi. For whatever reason, I just couldn't get it to connect to the net and my troubleshooting told me it was a DNS server problem. All other devices (laptop running Windows 8.1, 2 x Android phones and 2 x Android tablets) had no issues, so I tried the netbook on a couple of other wireless networks and it worked perfectly. I even tried connecting directly into the indoor unit (that connects to the dish outside) with an ethernet cable, but the DNS still wasn't resolving.

So, I got on to Fastcom support, and they updated the firmware for my equipment and although, I still couldn't connect wirelessly, everything was fine when I used an Ethernet cable, so I knew there was no more problem on their end.

So, onto the Netgear router. After a few factory resets and a firmware upgrade, I finally got the netbook to connect on wifi. Great, I thought, until later on when I was using the W8.1 laptop, the wifi connection started dropping randomly and I would have to quickly switch the laptop's wifi off and on again to get it working. Sometimes it would go fine for 30-40 minutes and other times it would drop 2/3 times in the space of 10 minutes.

I searched the web for solutions, so I changed power settings and checked for latest adapter drivers etc, all to no avail.

That night, I received some updates and the problem seemed to go away, until last night when I got more updates, and the problem has reappeared worse than ever today. I'm losing connection 5/6 times an hour all day. All my other devices are and have been working perfectly during all this.

I've tried system restore to before last night's updates and that hasn't worked and I'm coming to the end of my tether now, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

same ol sh1te

Are you experiencing disconnections or pages timing out? A Dns issue would not cause disconnections, just page timeouts where your devices wouldn't know where to go. Try statically set Dns to Google (8.8.8.8) to see if things improve
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/shorttutorials/assigning-static-ip-and-dns-address-in-windows-8

Also, a good place to start is try changing channel on the wifi router. Get Inssider to see what channels are in use nearby and move to one well away from all others. Any baby monitors or video senders in the house? these can interfere and not show up in Inssider.

El Weirdo

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Are you experiencing disconnections or pages timing out? A Dns issue would not cause disconnections, just page timeouts where your devices wouldn't know where to go. Try statically set Dns to Google (8.8.8.8) to see if things improve
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/shorttutorials/assigning-static-ip-and-dns-address-in-windows-8

Also, a good place to start is try changing channel on the wifi router. Get Inssider to see what channels are in use nearby and move to one well away from all others. Any baby monitors or video senders in the house? these can interfere and not show up in Inssider.

Apologies, yes it's pages timing out. Troubleshooting says gives the following message:

"Windows can't communicate with the device or resource
(Primary DNS server)"

ETA: Changing DNS to Google doesn't appear to have worked.

same ol sh1te

El Weirdo wrote: »

Apologies, yes it's pages timing out. Troubleshooting says gives the following message:

"Windows can't communicate with the device or resource
(Primary DNS server)"

Right, then statically set the Google ones 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. You can also set the router to give these out too, change it from dynamic under DHCP and add them (not familiar with the router but should be something similar)

El Weirdo

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Right, then statically set the Google ones 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. You can also set the router to give these out too, change it from dynamic under DHCP and add them (not familiar with the router but should be something similar)

Cheers, I've done this but no joy, I'm afraid.

same ol sh1te

El Weirdo wrote: »

Cheers, I've done this but no joy, I'm afraid.

That says it's not a dns problem but your connection could be dropping

tomatofruit

in the advanced boot menu (f2 on startup i think) there are wireless options you can change.I remember having to change a setting in the bios here on a laptop i had that kept dropping the signal. without having it here in front of me there was an option on the wireless drop-down that allowed to choose always in the signal category

same ol sh1te

same ol sh1te wrote: »

That says it's not a dns problem but your connection could be dropping

Sorry for being short, was out and about on mobile.

You will need to see if you can ping the site in question and also the router IP when the connection drops. Is it your own router or the ISP supplied one, if it's your own I'd try a factory reset

ressem

I'd guess that the latest version of the netgear fimware has issues, and that the netbook wifi is attempting to communicate with it in a way that is poorly implemented on the netgear.

I'd read up on whether the netgear can have it's firmware downgraded to a version that is stable with your Windows laptop.
Then investigate the advanced wifi settings on the netbook. Is the driver for the wifi on the netbook a windows default version? Or is there an Intel / Broadcom / other wifi configuration program that might be trying to be excessively optimised? (Or the netbook could have a physical issue like one of the internal antenna connections being loose.)

Since they work with a physical connection, it's unlikely to be a DNS issue, or a proxy issue.
I assume that when connected to the wifi, the netbook cannot ping the IP address of the Netgear reliably, or it's been assigned a 'not connected' type of IP address (169.254.xxx.xxx).

If you enter
Windows Key + R > cmd > ipconfig
on the netbook
It should tell you the IP address that it is trying to use for the connection.

If working it would usually be something between (192.168.0.1 to 192.168.254.253)
or (10.0.0.1 to 10.254.254.253)

A)
If not working it might be 169.254.x.x. This would indicate that it has not successfully received an IP from the Netgear due to the problem wifi connection.

Wireless LAN adapter WiFi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : mydomain.example
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::b113::xxxx.xxxx.xxxx
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.139
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

If you did get an IP address in 192. or 10. , then in the same cmd windows try
ping -n 100 {your gateway ip; as shown in my case above as 192.168.0.1}

ping -n 100 8.8.8.8
try to bounce a signal from Google's DNS server and receive a response.

tracert 8.8.8.8
try to bounce a signal from the routers between you and google, and see which steps don't respond.