Why Wi-Fi Keeps Disconnecting, and the Settings to Check in the Right Order

A consistent pattern of cutting out/disconnecting and reconnecting (though not changing anything) is usually caused by one specific issue/setting. You are able to identify that issue by changing one thing at a time, and watching its effect on your laptop connection. Windows saves a log of all connectivity issues; so you don’t need to remember how many times your connection drops out – just check the log.

All of these things produce “the same result” as far as connectivity drops are concerned (e.g. when the wifi is disconnecting/weak/no power-saving feature, bad drivers), a combination of drivers and/or network settings that was reset did not help until the Microsoft Q&A troubleshooter from Microsoft pointed to another cause. Therefore, this list of things can be changed in the order below – to help determine your problem with wifi connectivity next time.

Why Your Wi-Fi Keeps Disconnecting — and Why Applying Every Fix at Once Doesn’t Work

Wi-Fi drops occur when there is a break between your wireless adapter on your laptop and the router. There are many reasons that can cause this break. For example, the signal may not be strong enough at your location, Windows may be putting your wireless adapter in sleep mode to maintain battery life, or there may be bugs in the drivers. The wireless connection could also be switching between two different access points or the router could be changing channels or running buggy firmware.

Microsoft has a Wi-Fi troubleshooting page that contains 13 general steps such as restarting the router and performing a full network reset. Each step on the list could be a good step on its own. However, if you perform five of them in one evening, it would be impossible to determine which of the five steps were successful and you would have no way to repeat the successful step if you get new Windows updates. Additionally, if the Wi-Fi drops continue to occur after performing multiple steps, it would be difficult to return to the original configuration before trying multiple steps.

This situation is illustrated by the post of an HP laptop owner on the HP Community forum. In this post, the owner tried various networking solutions such as remaking the connection, resetting the network, disabling power-saving mode for the adapter, using maximum performance power settings, running the TCP/IP reset commands, and reinstalling the latest driver; none of these worked and the list of steps did not provide any guidance for the next steps to take. While each of these items could be a reasonable fix, attempting all five at once offers no information as to which item provided the solution.

Before continuing with the changes outlined in the other sections, take the time to document all of your previous changes. The process is designed to be incremental (change one thing, test the new result) so you must know your original baseline in order to see the improvements.

The One-Variable-at-a-Time Test

The process can be broken down into two steps: recording when drops occur, and ensuring that when you check drops you have only changed one variable.

Where Windows records each drop

Windows will automatically log Wi-Fi disconnects in the Operational log of the WLAN AutoConfig service (identified as Event ID 8003). According to What2Log, you can access the event logs by using the Event Viewer (type “Event Viewer” into the Start menu) and look under the Applications and Services Logs folder, then drill down through Microsoft > Windows > WLAN-AutoConfig > Operational. Each Event ID 8003 indicates that a disconnection occurred, along with a timestamp.

There’s also a faster summary. Open Command Prompt as administrator and type netsh wlan show wlanreport. Microsoft says the wireless network report it produces is an HTML file covering all Wi-Fi events from the last three days. It groups them into sessions and includes a section listing the reasons you were disconnected, plus your current driver version and date. Run it once now to get your starting point, and again after each change.

Keeping a simple log

In addition to the Windows log, it is helpful to maintain a small hand-written (or spreadsheet) notebook or log to record where you are physically located and what else is happening at the time of disconnection. The Windows log will provide information on when a disconnection occurred, but your personal notes will allow you to correlate disconnections to specific locations or activities around the time of disconnection. Here is a layout that covers what the later sections need:

Two columns of data will provide the majority of information you need to troubleshoot your Wi-Fi dropouts, including the following: “Power Source,” which indicates whether the disconnections occur on battery power or AC power, and “Change in Effect,” which ensures that each disconnection is associated with only one variable that is changed. To use these logs effectively, simply identify a variable that you wish to test and make one change to that variable (e.g., changing the power adapter), then use the laptop for at least 24 hours to gather data on how many Event ID 8003 events occur during that period.

Check Signal Strength First: The Three-Room Test

The signal should always be your starting point when investigating connectivity issues on your laptop. Checking the bars on the icon in the taskbar is helpful but not very accurate. The more accurate way to determine signal strength is in dBm (decibel-milliwatts). The dBm figures are negative, and the closer to zero they are, the stronger the signal is.

TP-Link’s troubleshooting page gives this rating scale:

The threshold for “Poor” signal strength is around -71 dBm or less, which is where you will begin to lose connection as shown in the table; there’s no reason to doubt the table here.

How to take the reading

On most Windows builds, netsh wlan show interfaces in Command Prompt shows signal as a percentage. One Wi-Fi engineer’s blog reports that a Windows 11 Insider Preview build now shows the value in dBm directly, but he wasn’t sure which version added it, so your laptop may not show it yet. The HP owner mentioned in the next section checked signal with the free WiFi Analyzer app from the Microsoft Store, which gives dBm readings.

To get an accurate reading of the signal, take three measurements from different locations: next to the router, in the room where you normally use your computer, and in the room where you have the worst interference. Record all three of these readings in your log. If you are experiencing a drop in signal only in the area where the reading falls into the poor range, you have identified the source of your drops; this means that distance or location is causing the problem, not a configuration issue. The ASUS router guide states that 2.4GHz has a longer range than 5GHz; however, 5GHz is a faster mode of operation and is therefore more susceptible to interference from metal cabinets, concrete walls, and household appliances such as microwaves. If your readings all indicate a good or excellent signal strength, it is unlikely that weak signal is the cause of your drops, and you can continue troubleshooting.

The Power-Saving Setting That Silently Kills Your Wi-Fi

Windows uses the option to turn off the wireless adapter when it is in battery conserve mode. If it does not wake up properly, you will see an adapter disconnect/drop. This drop is a different issue than signal strength, and a laptop that is 1 metre away from the router may still disconnect/drop due to this problem.

To help diagnose whether your drops are occurring from when the laptop was plugged in or unplugged, look for clusters of drops occurring in your logs. You may find clusters of drops occurring when the laptop is not plugged into the charger (such as during power outages).

Microsoft gives two places to change this, and you should treat them as two separate tests:

1. Adapter power management. Open Device Manager, expand Network adapters, right-click your Wi-Fi adapter and choose Properties. On the Power Management tab, uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”, as described in Microsoft’s fix guide.
2. Power plan setting. Go to Control Panel, then Hardware and Sound, then Power Options. Choose Change plan settings, then Change advanced power settings. Expand Wireless Adapter Settings and set Power Saving Mode to Maximum Performance. This is the step Microsoft lists for connections that drop frequently.

You can mix up these two options easily. The first determines whether Windows can turn your wireless adapter off completely. The second determines how much power your wireless adapter will save while operating. So, first change the option to allow the wireless adapter to be turned off completely, log for a day, then change the power-saving option for the wireless adapter.

Some laptops do not have the Power Management tab; for instance, the owner of an HP laptop had to edit the Windows Registry just to get the Power Management tab to display. This can also cause serious problems if you don’t do it correctly; therefore, if your laptop does not have a Power Management tab, adjust the Power Management settings from the power plan setting.

This method of turning off your computer’s power-saving features is not guaranteed to fix every situation. For example, one Reddit user stated that they experienced Wi-Fi drops “3 or 4 times an hour” for 20-30 seconds, and after they disabled their power-saving mode, they did not see any difference in their Wi-Fi issues. This user was running Linux instead of Windows; however, the concept is still valid. This user eventually had their Wi-Fi dropping problems resolved when they changed from the 5.0 GHz band to the 2.4 GHz band, indicating that their initial problems were related to the band or channel, rather than power-saving modes. If you have already tried disabling your laptop’s power-saving feature, and you did not notice any decrease in the number of drops after doing so, you should feel free to re-enable it and move on to your wireless adapter’s driver.

Your Wi-Fi Driver Might Be the Problem — and Newer Isn’t Always Better

The driver is the interface software that Windows uses to communicate with the Wi-Fi adapter (you can think of it as the “driver” that allows or enables Windows to communicate with or access a wireless network). A buggy driver can result in a drop in connectivity, even if you have a perfect Wi-Fi signal and power-saving options turned off. The problem stems from the common misconception that the most recent version is always the best version.

One of the replies to the HP Community Realtek post states: “The older driver, version 6001.15.152.0, was the only one that worked for me after installing it last year. In addition, I have had no dropouts since then.” However, there are also instances where a newer version will fix a problem. According to Dell’s advisory, the latest version of the Realtek 8852BE chip driver (version 6001.15.165.3 and higher) will resolve any problems you may experience with losing your wireless connection when switching from one access point to another. You need to install the driver version compatible with your hardware, and your driver log will serve as an indicator.

Rolling back, updating, or reinstalling

To identify which driver version you have installed and the date of installation, view the Wireless Network Report, or search for the version and date on the Driver tab of your Wireless Adapter’s Properties in Device Manager. Then choose one route based on when the drops started:

1. Drops started after an update. In Device Manager, open the adapter’s Properties, go to the Driver tab and select Roll Back Driver. Microsoft’s driver guide says this needs administrator permissions and that “if the issue occurred after a Windows Update, reinstalling the previous driver often resolves it.”
2. The driver is old or the laptop maker has published a fix. Download the driver from your laptop manufacturer’s support site, then in Device Manager choose Update driver, then Browse my computer for drivers. Microsoft advises against downloading drivers from anywhere other than the manufacturer’s official site.
3. Neither of the above helps. Uninstall the adapter in Device Manager and restart, and Windows will reinstall a driver. Before you do this, download a backup driver from the manufacturer, using another device and a USB flash drive if needed. Microsoft warns that without one, you may be left with no working Wi-Fi to download it.

Finally, after making changes to your driver, use it normally for the next 24 hours and monitor the drop counts to establish whether it has reduced from previous levels. If you find that your connection stopped working correctly after the most recent Update, Microsoft’s Fix guide document recommends that you consider re-installing the driver. Your driver log also serves as evidence that this was a problem with the most recent Update.

Why Your Laptop Keeps Switching Wi-Fi Networks

If you have a mesh Wi-Fi network in your house, several routers, or both, your laptop may experience disconnection from one access point just to switch to another, even when the current one has a strong signal. Windows has a feature called Excessive Roaming that may need to be examined before you blame your router for this behavior. When the user who posed the question on Microsoft Q&A ran the troubleshooter, the result was: “Your computer keeps changing between different wireless routers or access points.” This issue will not apply to homes that only have one Wi-Fi router with no extension.

There is a setting called Roaming Aggressiveness that determines how weak the current signal must get before your laptop will check for another access point to connect to. According to Intel’s explanation, at the Highest level of Roaming Aggressiveness, the Wi-Fi adapter will begin connecting to new networks long before the existing network has dropped below a usable level of signal strength. At the Lowest level, the Wi-Fi adapter will not attempt to change networks until after the existing network’s signal strength has dropped well below reasonable limits.

To perform the change, you will need to open up the Device Manager. From there, you can expand the list of Network adapters and then select the properties option of the Wi-Fi adapter. Within the Properties dialog box of the Wi-Fi adapter, you will have access to the Advanced tab, where you will see an entry in the list called Roaming Aggressiveness. Based on the adapter settings recommendations from the Dell Website, an acceptable setting for devices that stay in one location at home is either the lowest or the medium-low setting, whereas medium should be set on business networks, where devices are traveling from one access point to another. Intel recommends the medium setting as their default and if the other settings that you may try do not resolve or improve the situation, go back to the Intel setting. The Dell site also indicates that based on the model of the Wi-Fi adapter, and possibly the driver, some options may not appear for changing the Roaming Aggressiveness setting. If your laptop has no entry for Roaming Aggressiveness, then you will be unable to perform this test.

In addition to the information provided in the Q&A section of that forum, an additional recommendation was made to remove any networks that you do not want your laptop to connect to by going to the Settings, Networks, Network and Internet, Wi-Fi, and then managing your known networks and removing the unwanted connections.

Router-Side Checks After You’ve Ruled Out the Laptop

After testing the connection on signal strength, power saving settings, drivers, and roaming capabilities without any difference in number of “drops” (disconnects), you will want to focus on the Router. First check other devices for any dropped connections at the same time as your laptop. If the laptop is the only device dropping, it indicates that likely the Router is not at fault but instead there is a compatibility issue between the Router and the Laptop.

Channel and DFS

Routers that transmit using the 5 GHz frequency can also utilize Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) for their channels. The channels used for DFS share bandwidth with radar. When a DFS Channel is being used by a Router and it detects radar interference on that channel, all connected devices will be disconnected from the Router “for a period of time” while the Router moves to an open channel. Additionally, once a Router reboots on a DFS Channel, it may become unavailable on the 5 GHz band for anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes. If the only dropped connections occur on the 5 GHz band and appear to be random, consider turning off Automatic DFS Selection. To do this on ASUS Routers, go to Wireless > General > Uncheck Automatic Channel Selection (including DFS Channels). ASUS also indicates that the channels available to Routers in different Countries vary based on local regulatory agencies, this means the channels offered by a Router in the U.S. will likely differ from those offered in Nigeria. ASUS’s DFS explainer says that the channels available differ by country according to local law, so what your router offers in Nigeria may not match screenshots from elsewhere.

Congestion on the 2.4 GHz frequency requires a separate troubleshooting process. TP-Link suggests switching to another channel size with a smaller channel width and testing the connection again for drops.

Bands and one network name

When both 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz are associated with one SSID, the device (router or laptop) may automatically select between the two bands. It is recommended by TP-Link not to associate multiple bands with the same SSID; likewise, ASUS’s troubleshooting has suggested that users disable Smart Connect so that both bands can be configured with individual SSIDs. Once the bands have been split, connect only to one band for a full day, which was the method used to determine the need for the second Reddit user to change to using the 2.4 GHz band.

Firmware and Wi-Fi 6 compatibility

ASUS suggests ensuring router firmware is kept up-to-date. It is possible for firmware to both improve and diminish the performance of the router, as illustrated in one Reddit post by a Deco user who suspected firmware version 1.3.0 to be causing issues after updating; a second user had newer equipment with prior versions of firmware that caused consistent disconnections for the owner after about six days. A comparison between firmware logs would also provide information as to whether something changed in the firmware after it was updated.

An HP laptop owner had purchased a new Wi-Fi 6 device that only dropped while on battery and was connected to an old router; subsequently the owner solved it by buying a Wi-Fi 6 router and believed that the only cause of the drops was a Wi-Fi 6 power management feature called Target Wake Time, which had not been confirmed. The owner also suggested testing for free before spending money. According to Dell’s adapter guide, if you experience continual disconnections on newer routers, you can disable your adapter’s 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) mode, which will force the adapter to revert to an older version of the wireless protocol. This setting may not be available on all adapters; an HP user on Reddit noted that he couldn’t find it.

A factory reset is the last resort on the router side. ASUS warns that it clears all settings and you’ll need to set the router up again.

When the Drops Aren’t Yours to Fix

A number of drops are not caused by anything on your computer or within your router(s) configurations, therefore the following verification indicates if that is the case for you.

The link to the router stays up, but the internet goes. Microsoft’s fix guide describes the test. Run ipconfig to find your router’s address (listed as Default gateway), then ping that address. If the router replies while web pages still fail, the problem may be the modem or your internet provider. Microsoft says to contact the provider or check for an outage. If the router doesn’t reply, connect the laptop to the modem with an Ethernet cable where possible. If that connection works, the problem is the Wi-Fi router.

Also, wired devices can go down. According to ASUS’s guidance, if your wired devices cannot reach the internet, your issue is with your ISP rather than your Wi-Fi connection. TP-Link’s advice is similar; connect your device directly to your modem. If you experience any problems or unstable light patterns from the modem, report it to your ISP. Your drop log and wireless report should provide the ISP technician with a specific timeframe instead of a vague “it keeps dropping”.

A defective or broken adapter. If the wireless adapter does not appear in Device Manger, this means the Windows operating system cannot detect it. According to Microsoft, if the wireless network report shows a “Problem Number” it will match a Device Manager error code that explains why the wireless driver cannot be started. If either error indicates that the adapter cannot be detected, then your next step is to contact your manufacturer or an authorized service centre (especially while the laptop is still under warranty), rather than making any further settings changes.

Performing a network reset. Microsoft recommends this as the last method of troubleshooting. A network reset will delete and then reinstall all network adapters and return them to their default settings. This means you may have to set up the VPN software again and that your previously saved networks will now have to be re-added as public profiles. Wait until all other tests of making one change at a time have been completed before considering this step as your first method of troubleshooting.

The full diagnostic sequence

1. Write down any settings you’ve already changed, then run netsh wlan show wlanreport to record your starting point.
2. Log drops for a day, noting the room and whether the laptop is on battery or charging.
3. Take signal readings in three rooms. Fix placement if the drops line up with poor readings.
4. Turn off adapter power management and log a day. Then set the power plan’s Wireless Adapter Settings to Maximum Performance and log another day.
5. Check the driver version. Roll back, update from the manufacturer, or reinstall, and log after each.
6. If you have more than one access point, lower Roaming Aggressiveness and log.
7. On the router, turn off automatic DFS channel selection, give each band its own name, and check firmware, one change at a time.
8. Run the ping and wired tests. Contact your provider or service centre if the results point to them.

Where Most People Go Wrong

One of the biggest misunderstandings for many people is adjusting five (or possibly even more) different settings in the same sitting and not being able to pin down which setting actually had an effect. Typically, when you see drops, it can be traced to one of the aforementioned causes (the strength of the signal, the power saving feature, an outdated driver, the effect of roaming on the connection and/or to possibly the router). The only way to see what has an impact on droppage is a drop log, which allows you to see which change had an impact on reducing the amount of dropped packets for your connection. Once you have made one change and allowed 24 hours for the changes to take place, you should be able to see whether this change was helpful in reducing dropped packets or not. If it stops dropping packets, you know which setting to look for again after future Windows or router updates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my phone stay connected when my laptop keeps dropping?

As indicated above, the problem appears to be with the laptop rather than the router. In Microsoft’s documentation, if another device works correctly with the router, it indicates the likelihood that the issue is with your particular device, so the first place to start troubleshooting should be with your device’ power saving mode, the drivers being used and how your device roams between different access points.

Should I just buy a new router?

You must test this first before replacing your current router to see if you have the same issue. While replacing your router fixed the problem for one HP owner, it reoccurred after replacing their Deco routers after 6 days. To see if that works for you or not, consider turning off the adapter’s Wi-Fi 6 mode as a low-cost potential fix.

Is it safe to leave Roaming Aggressiveness on Lowest?

For laptops used solely in a single location, Dell recommends that they be set to the Lowest or Medium-Low setting in terms of roaming or power-saving modes, while for those that travel regularly to different access points, Dell recommends using the Medium setting. Intel advises returning your laptop to its default Medium setting unless other settings yield improvements.