I have to keep resetting my wifi adapter? Is there a fix?

Jon_01

I did a full clean install of W10 (64bit) a month ago as I was having a number of problems. It's fixed all of them apart from one.

The wifi adapter keeps dropping out and needs resetting. This was running at about twice a day but is getting worse.  It now needs a restart after the first boot of the day. It says it has a connection but no sites can be found on any browser (server not found error).
I appear to be running the newest drivers (Broadcom 802.11ac), auto update can't find anything newer and I've search for anything new but I can't find anything dated after 2017.
The PC is an Alienware 17 laptop about 3 to 4 years old.
Can anyone suggest a long term fix?

Thanks. . .
 

DoaM

One option ... remove the WiFi adaptor from Device Manager and opt to also delete the driver files. Reboot your PC, physically cable it to your router, and open Device Manager to scan for hardware changes ... this should find the WiFi adaptor and go away to find a compatible driver file.

Otherwise ... use a WiFi scanner app (on your PC or on your phone) to see how busy the WiFi networks are in your vicinity. Change the channel on your router to whichever one is quietest.

Neil_Jones

Seems to be common:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Alienware-17-Broadcom-802-11-ac-Wifi-issue/td-p/5633292 - might want to check out the solution from Switish.

DoaM

Neil_Jones said:

Seems to be common:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Alienware-17-Broadcom-802-11-ac-Wifi-issue/td-p/5633292 - might want to check out the solution from Switish.

Good find.

[Deleted User]

Neil_Jones said:

Seems to be common:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Alienware-17-Broadcom-802-11-ac-Wifi-issue/td-p/5633292 - might want to check out the solution from Switish.

Very interesting, this happened to me on Monday ...... but I have a Lenovo (not Dell) laptop!

Neil_Jones

GabiB said:

Neil_Jones said:

Seems to be common:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Alienware-17-Broadcom-802-11-ac-Wifi-issue/td-p/5633292 - might want to check out the solution from Switish.

Very interesting, this happened to me on Monday ...... but I have a Lenovo (not Dell) laptop!

Same principle.  The same sort of cards end up in various manufacturers machines and you'll quite often find that if a particular card has an issue , it'll affect all of them regardless of the brand of computer.  (there are some Realtek WLAN cards that have similar issues and these have all ended up primarily but not exclusively in HP laptops).

Jon_01

Thanks everyone.  I've tried the fix on the Dell site and it stayed connected for last night but still won't connect on the first boot this morning, I had to reboot it to get to work.
I'm going to find a network lead and remove the driver and see if that fixes it.

askeym

You've presumably run W10s network troubleshooter.

This isn't spam but I use either DriverBooster or DriverPack to update drivers. Forget the advice about always going to the manufacturers website. I've been doing this for years on various machines and it's perfectly safe. Another app I use is Inssider. This tells you who and what channels all those nearby are on and it's the lower figure which has the strongest signal to give you a clue which channel would be best.

DoaM

If by "lowest figure" you mean "channel number" - that's nonsense. (If you mean something else then apologies - I can't understand your post). Choose channel 1, 6 or 11 (for the 2.4GHz WiFi), whichever has the lowest signal amplitude (height) amongst all the other networks. Make sure your router is fixed to use that channel - i.e. disable any Smart feature that might try to channel hop as they never work very well - they tend to target fixate to the same channel as the closest strongest other network, the opposite of what you want.

askeym

DoaM said:

If by "lowest figure" you mean "channel number" - that's nonsense. (If you mean something else then apologies - I can't understand your post). Choose channel 1, 6 or 11 (for the 2.4GHz WiFi), whichever has the lowest signal amplitude (height) amongst all the other networks. Make sure your router is fixed to use that channel - i.e. disable any Smart feature that might try to channel hop as they never work very well - they tend to target fixate to the same channel as the closest strongest other network, the opposite of what you want.

My bad for not explaining properly. By lowest I meant the dBm signal. ie; mine is -40 compared to the other 5 users in the vicinity who range from -46 to -80, so mine is the strongest signal.

mluton

Install the older driver and tell it not to update