The probable causes of unstable wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems with both hardware and software. It is advisable to start the search for a solution with the simplest actions, even if at first glance they seem useless.
One of the two main problems (the other is the random wakeup of Windows 11-based computing devices) that Windows 11 users continue to encounter in large numbers is the periodic spontaneous disconnection of client devices from Wi-Fi wireless networks and / or the inability to reconnect to them. Often such phenomena are accompanied by error messages in the system notification area: for example, “Unidentified network”, “No Internet access” or “Restricted access”, which are by and large familiar to many users of Windows operating systems of previous generations. In other cases, there may be no reports of specific connection problems at all. A technical glitch may first appear immediately after upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11, causing the same wireless network through which the user most recently accessed the Internet successfully to suddenly stop being available on the upgraded system. This happens in any network environment – in the office, public networks, for example, in the subway or at home, which greatly complicates the life of users who encounter this phenomenon, because even after restoration, the connection continues to periodically break. Obviously, the probable reasons for the unstable operation of wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems both with the hardware (routers, Wi-Fi adapters, network cards, provider equipment, etc.), and with the software (poor-quality firmware and device drivers , unverified operating system updates, network settings failures, corrupted system files). Unfortunately, in most situations it is difficult to immediately determine the cause of the problem and you have to sort through various methods. which greatly complicates the life of users who are faced with a similar phenomenon, because even after restoration, the connection continues to periodically break. Obviously, the probable reasons for the unstable operation of wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems both with the hardware (routers, Wi-Fi adapters, network cards, provider equipment, etc.), and with the software (poor-quality firmware and device drivers , unverified operating system updates, network settings failures, corrupted system files). Unfortunately, in most situations it is difficult to immediately determine the cause of the problem and you have to sort through various methods. which greatly complicates the life of users who are faced with a similar phenomenon, because even after restoration, the connection continues to periodically break. Obviously, the probable reasons for the unstable operation of wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems both with the hardware (routers, Wi-Fi adapters, network cards, provider equipment, etc.), and with the software (poor-quality firmware and device drivers , unverified operating system updates, network settings failures, corrupted system files). Unfortunately, in most situations it is difficult to immediately determine the cause of the problem and you have to sort through various methods. the probable causes of unstable wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems both with the hardware (routers, Wi-Fi adapters, network cards, provider equipment, etc.), and with the software (poor-quality firmware and device drivers, unverified operating system updates, network settings failures, system file corruption). Unfortunately, in most situations it is difficult to immediately determine the cause of the problem and you have to sort through various methods. the probable causes of unstable wireless connections are very diverse – these can be problems both with the hardware (routers, Wi-Fi adapters, network cards, provider equipment, etc.), and with the software (poor-quality firmware and device drivers, unverified operating system updates, network settings failures, system file corruption). Unfortunately, in most situations it is difficult to immediately determine the cause of the problem and you have to sort through various methods.
Solutions
It is advisable to start the search for a solution with the simplest actions, even if at first glance they seem useless. The golden rule of interaction with any electronic equipment in case of any failures is to turn on / off (reboot) the device several times. In our case, you need to restart the laptop or computer on which the problem occurs, and the router that distributes the Internet. Moreover, you need to do this correctly – ideally, disconnect all wired connections and the power cable from the router for a couple of minutes, and then check if the error with turning off Wi-Fi repeats.
If this does not help, try simply reconnecting to your usual Wi-Fi network. To do this, click on the network connection icon in the system notification bar in the lower right corner of the screen. Using the side arrow-bracket, go to the section for choosing available wireless networks, find your network there and right-click on the “i” icon immediately after the name of the network – select “Forget” from the pop-up menu. A few minutes after these steps, you need to go to “Control Panel” / “Network and Internet” / “Wi-Fi” / “Show available networks”, find the desired network in the list again and connect to it again. After that, check the Wi-Fi performance again.
Instead of selecting the “Forget” pop-up menu item, you can go to the “Properties” section opposite your network, where in the “Network profile type” subsection, activate the “Private” mode. Then check again to see if the problem is fixed. It also makes sense to turn “Airplane mode” on and off, which affects the network settings on the device. The corresponding button appears in the pop-up menu when you click the active network connection button.
You can also check how the device works when connected to any other available Wi-Fi networks – as a test network, you can start distributing mobile Internet from your smartphone. In addition, it makes sense to evaluate the influence of the signal strength of the router on the stability of the signal: to do this, reduce the physical distance between the receiving device and the router. If you use a separate Wi-Fi adapter (external or in the form of an expansion card for a PC), be sure to check its performance in other conditions (on a different computer, with different networks, etc.). By the way, if a laptop chip or an external Wi-Fi adapter supports different frequency bands (2.4; 5 or 6 GHz), you should check its operation in each of the modes.
Of course, it is worth installing the latest drivers for the Wi-Fi adapter, as well as updating the router firmware. However, keep in mind that if it is easy enough to roll back to the old version of drivers on Windows, then after flashing the router, returning to the previous configuration can be a non-trivial task. There is no universal solution here, because each model range of devices has its own firmware update features, as well as the regularity of new versions. On the other hand, you can try to get by with just sorting through different versions of drivers for Wi-Fi.
The next way is to reset the network settings. To do this, go to the “Control Panel” / “Network and Internet” section (by the way, you can quickly get into the Windows settings by holding down the Windows function key and the letter “I” at the same time), find there “Advanced network settings” and “Network reset” , then confirm by selecting Reset Now. Restart your laptop and check for the problem.
If the previous method did not help, you can reset the network settings for the TCP / IP stack in manual mode. We launch the Windows command line as an administrator (if you don’t know where it is, enter the cmd command in the Windows search bar). After opening the command line, enter the following several network commands one after another (without quotes) and wait for each of them to complete: 1) “netsh winsock reset”; 2) “ipconfig /release”; 3) “ipconfig /newconfig”; 4) “ipconfig /flushdns”. Reboot and check the Wi-Fi is working.
It often helps to solve problems with incorrect Wi-Fi operation by changing the Wi-Fi power management settings. First, turn on maximum performance in your wireless adapter’s power settings, and you need to do this for both battery and mains mode. To do this, in the power plan management section, click “Change plan settings”, “Change advanced power settings”, in the pop-up window – “Wireless adapter settings”, “Power saving mode” and set “Maximum performance” in two items: “On battery” and “From the network”. Reboot and check if the problem persists. In addition, it is advisable to disable the power saving mode for the wireless adapter. You can do this in the “Device Manager” / “Network adapters” section: we find our adapter there, select “Properties” and go to the “Power Management” tab, where we uncheck the box next to the item “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” If the laptop / computer has other network devices (including wired ones), the procedure can be repeated for them. Reboot and check.
It happens that changing other implicit settings helps in solving the problem with disconnecting from Wi-Fi. For example, changing the channel width from automatic to 20 or 40 MHz. The channel width can be changed both in the router settings (the location of this item in the menu may vary) and in the Wi-Fi adapter settings in Windows. Open “Device Manager” / “Network Adapters”, find the device you need and go to the “Advanced” tab. Next, you need to find the properties “Channel width for 2.4GHz” and “Channel width for 5.2GHz”. Most likely, these parameters will be either in the “Auto” or “40 MHz” mode – try fixing the desired mode to “20 MHz” and check the quality of the Wi-Fi.
Despite the fact that most users are skeptical about the next solution, sometimes this is how you can get rid of Windows network problems. Yes, we are talking about automatic network troubleshooting. We find the desired section by pressing the Windows key and searching for the query “Troubleshooting”. Next, select “Open”, “Troubleshooting Settings”, “Other Troubleshooting Tools”, and in the “Most Frequent” section, click “Run” right next to “Internet Connections”. After that, Windows will automatically try to find the source of the problems and bring the network settings to the ideal.
If the described methods did not help at all, try disabling the built-in firewall in Windows. In some cases, this radical approach solves the problem. If, after disabling the firewall, the connection stops spontaneously falling off, you will need to take a deeper look at the firewall settings to understand what exactly is preventing Wi-Fi from working properly during its background operation. It is strongly not recommended to continue working on a computer with a completely disabled firewall.
Conclusions
It is possible to encounter unstable work in wireless networks on other versions of Windows, but many of the described methods for solving the problem are universal for the entire OS family. Perhaps the names of the menu items or the sequence of access to them may differ slightly, but in general, the approaches to finding and solving this problem are similar in any OS. No less interesting is the fact that it is quite possible to encounter a combination of two main Windows 11 problems, when the computer randomly wakes up from sleep (1) and is not able to independently re-establish a wireless connection to a previously approved Wi-Fi network (2). However, the second part of this complex problem (reconnecting to a wireless network) is usually solved by the methods described above, affecting the power saving settings of the device in general and the Wi-Fi adapter in particular,
