• [W10] WiFi continuously disconnects on laptop, but only at school
    13 replies, posted
So yeah, weird issue with my laptop. WiFi works fine at home, but when i'm at school it drops out regularly with a yellow exclamation mark. Thing is that it's not the network itself since no one else seems to have this issue. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107253/fe860a45-4c83-4ff4-a390-f8d3c771540d/image.png Even stranger is that I also had a different possibly related issue with the WiFi where certain sites (all school related) were inaccessible from school, but only from school. Most, if not all of them even worked at the start of the year. I 'fixed' this by changing my DNS server on my laptop to 1.1.1.1 but this seems to reset itself to default sometimes. This is all super frustrating because we have online exercises and tests that recognize your answer as 'wrong' if your internet disconnects while submitting or going to the next question.
I've had this yellow symbol issue multiple times while managing windows 10 devices at my work, where a device loses access to network resources but still says it's connected to the SSID with "No Internet Access". Sometimes a device will drop access like that randomly, or won't reconnect fully on a reboot. A quick fix for me is to just disconnect and reconnect to the SSID, or to disable/re-enable your WiFi adapter under control panel and then try rejoining. From some previous googling, the only way I was able to resolve this for the most part in the long term was: Download latest drivers for your WiFi adapter from the manufacturer's website, don't just rely on Win 10 to install drivers for you. Disable OS power management settings for your WiFi adapter To disable power management stuff, this is what I did: Bring up the run box (Win key + R is fastest). Type "ncpa.cpl" without quotes, and hit enter. Right click your WiFi adapter and left click on properties Click configure, then click on the Power Management tab. Uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" Now click on the Advanced tab, and disable "Selective Suspend" I don't know if this addresses the actual problem, but I've seen it less frequently after taking the above actions on problem PCs. Also, are you on the latest version of Win 10? I think some of the buggy driver mess from earlier versions has been smoothed out somewhat in the newer releases. Also your website inaccessibility issue may be stemming from this, as when it happens to my devices at work, they are unable to contact our DNS or DHCP server or otherwise talk to any device, as if the device itself was malfunctioning as I said resetting or reconnecting the device usually fixed it. I would also get in contact with your network administrator to double check your network settings being applied to your PC at school to get a better picture of where the failure is occurring.
I've updated the drivers again but the power management option seems very likely to me! This laptop already has weird power managment issues (screen dims and GPU runs at lower performance when on battery, no matter what settings you disable) which leads me to only use it on a charger. I don't have the Advanced option you mention however; https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107253/3d167836-a16d-4647-9107-72ce7ad2da7f/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107253/14f5a434-ff64-4a2e-a00d-4924c47d6dd9/image.png I think you're on the right track with the power management though so fingers crossed for the next couple of days
I seem to have a quite some updates lined up so I'll try installing those today and hope that helps
From my experience and googling, WiFi issues appear to be a common theme in Win 10, especially in the earlier stages of its life. Let us know how things go after you install those Windows 10 updates.
Still the same issues. I think I got all my Windows Updates now but fucked if I know because now my updates screen is empty. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107253/8a0972a1-6ef4-4995-8df9-167d7e47f419/image.png .
@Psychomaize Sorry for the ping but i'm still having the same issues, do you have any ideas?
No worries bro. I have to go to a quick meeting right now but I'll continue typing up my response once I return.
@Zotobom This is sounding like it may be a network conflict or a DNS issue on your school's network or your laptop. Your school's network should have a DHCP server that serves your laptop all of the correct network settings when you join the school network. The fact that you said you have to set static DNS server IPs in order for things to work is quite fishy, as that shouldn't be necessary if DHCP is serving you good settings. I would suggest NOT changing your DNS settings to an external DNS server like CloudFare's 1.1.1.1 as that will likely break any school intranet websites. First, I would suggest grabbing fresh network settings from your school's DHCP server by doing the following next time you are joined to your school's network: Change your active network adapter's IPv4 settings to "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically" Open CMD or powershell, and run the following commands: - ipconfig /release - ipconfig /renew Then on your laptop, do an ipconfig /all to see what your new IP and DNS information looks like. You want to have the same DNS servers (and in the same order) and Connection-specific DNS Suffix as other school computers where all websites are working correctly. Does it look like you're getting the same DNS servers now when comparing to someone's working setup at school? After performing these steps, try connecting to a school website by its hostname. If it fails to resolve, you may need to run a quick ipconfig /flushdns and try again. If it still fails, see if you can reach the host at all by pinging its IP rather than its hostname. If you run the command nslookup www.example.com on a school network-joined PC where everything works correctly, it will tell you the IP address of www.example.com and which DNS server gave it that answer. Uh I guess try that and let us know how it goes?
@Psychomaize I've done the release and renew already to no avail. Our school doesn't have an intranet, and the problem with the sites not being accessible is that it's not the sites themselves being inaccessible but the login service redirects you via a long link that doesn't load (and thus also being unpingable via CMD). I'll check the ipconfig with a working laptop when I can
Does your browser provide any sort of error message when it fails to load that you can post here? Have you tried opening these pages in different browsers? I've had vendor login pages that just straight up won't load or work correctly in a certain browser like FireFox, but the pages will load beautifully in Google Chrome or Edge. You may want to check to see if your adblocker is interfering with loading any page elements. Sorry if I miss the mark again just trying to eliminate everything I think could be playing a part.
I'll check the error message tomorrow, but i've checked on both incognito windows (without extensions) and other browsers with no changes
@Psychomaize The error I get when my network is disconnected in Chrome is the standard DNS probe error message. I've mysteriously stopped getting the page failing to load thing on automatic DNS settings so i'll report when that's back
When a page doesn't load it gives an ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT message
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