I need desperate help. Laptop loses wifi constantly at home. I have tried everything on this site and others

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tajlund

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Feb 12, 2015
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My laptop loses wifi and I have to run the troubleshooter to get it to reconnect. The computer is an MSI GT72 2 QD. It has had this problem since day one, but I replaced the wifi card (atheros) with an intel ac7260 (twice now once with another atheros and now the intel about a year ago). Today I did the new Windows 10 (64-bit) update and updated the intel drivers to the newest on the intel site (MSI hasn't updated their drivers since 2016). Now I'm losing connection every couple minutes instead of every hour or so. I've done netsh, I've done release and reset, I've replaced my router twice. But, I don't think this is the router since usually it's only my computer losing the connection (over a dozen devices in the house and only mine keeps losing connection). I've read every post on this site I could find similar to my problem, I've read every link that I could find searching on google that was similar to this problem, and nothing has worked. This is frustrating and is severely affecting my ability to enjoy gaming or the internet in general. I'll be happy to provide any further information as needed.

I have also reinstalled Windows 4 times during this whole ordeal. 3 years.
 
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tajlund

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One other bit of weirdness to the whole thing too. Before I did the most recent driver update, for about two days, every time it would disconnect the External Audio Device Detected alert would pop up like I had just plugged in my headphones. This stopped after the driver update.

 
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marksavio

marksavio

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it could be possible that the latest version may not work with your motherboard? or maybe you might have missed a different driver update?

since msi stopped supporting your motherboard. you can try using "driver booster". just to double-check if youve missed anything. though it may be difficult to do this with your current wifi problem. do u have a ethernet/lan cable you can work with instead?
 
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tajlund

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I did try Driver Booster and something didn't work. Since I can't remember what the problem was, I'll try it again and see what happens.
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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From your title I take it the problem occurs only at home, and the laptop connects fine to WiFi outside your house?

If so, what routers have you tried? The Asus routers have had a long-standing problem where the 2.4 GHz network is unreliable on some devices. Oddly, the problem only occurs with the 2.4 GHz private network. The devices connect just fine to the 2.4 GHz guest network (the 5 GHz network also works fine, private and guest). I played around with trying to fix it for a few weeks before giving up and replacing it with a Netgear router. In another thread someone suggested constraining the 2.4 GHz radio to a 20 MHz window, instead of auto-selecting 20/40 MHz. I don't have the router anymore so I can't test that.

If the problem occurs on other WiFi networks as well, then given that you've replaced the WiFi adapter and reinstalled Windows, I'd check the signal strength. Compare it to the signal strength of another laptop with the same WiFi card sitting the same distance from the router. It's possible one or both antenna leads are broken, so the card is just getting a weak signal.

Also, occasionally a manufacturer puts the antennas in a dumb place which causes reception problems, like with the iPhone 4. Try asking on the NotebookReview forums to see if other owners of your laptop model are having similar problems.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/msi-reviews-owners-lounges.1125/
 
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tajlund

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Actually the laptop never leaves my house. But, I have utilized multiple routers within my home the last 3 years. Signal strength is 44dBm on 2.4 and 57dBm on 5.

Routers have been Linksys and Netgear. Netgear Nighthawk, and the current one is a Linksys EA8500, can't remember the one in between.
 
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tajlund

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Driver booster worked well this time, but it didn't find anything for the wifi card. However, it turns out that a lot of drivers were MASSIVELY out of date since I've been relying on MSI. Thanks for that.
 
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tajlund

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I think my next step is to order a different card. Maybe the Intel 8260 will work. Or maybe not. I may have had a rogue app. For one thing intel had the zero configuration application running, it looks like that conflicts with Windows 10. So, we'll see how stable things remain for a while and hope that I fixed it.
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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OK, then try shutting off the power saving features of the network card. Open up device manager.

This PC -> right click -> Manage -> Device manager -> network adapters -> right-click your network card -> Power Management -> uncheck "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

You can also go through the Advanced tab to see if there are any power saving options specific to your network card, and disable those.
 
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tajlund

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Yeah, did all that ages ago. And again every time I had to redo Windows. Thanks though.

Woke up today with it a hundred times worse, won't stay connected for overa minute and gives no warning it's disconnected until it's been offline about two minutes. Had to access this site on my phone since the laptop won't stay online long enough to even type.

Just BSD'd me. This is getting worse and worse. Yet last night I was able to game online for 4 hours with no issues.
 
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tajlund

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I'm done messing with it, I'm going to factory reset the system and start over. If a factory reset doesn't fix it for a while, then it has to be hardware related.

Okay I have my answer. Completely reset Windows and the first thing that happened was the adapter died and had to run the troubleshooter.
 
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tajlund

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I changed the settings on the card and limited it to G only. For some reason with G it works fine, as soon as I try to use a/b/g it goes to hell. It means I can no longer connect on 5Ghz, but it should hold me over until my new card arrives. Thanks for all the help everyone. Nope I was wrong. As long as I wasn't on the computer it maintained contact with the wifi, once I started using it, the adapter had to be reset again. Now it's working with b/g. I'm just going to leave this alone until my replacement arrives.

Replacement arrived and does the exact same crap. Why would it work on a/b/g but constantly disconnect when running ac/n? Now running Intel 8260NGW.
 
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