Dell laptop dropping WiFi connection

[A993LAD]

I have an ongoing problem with my Dell laptop which has been happening for about a year now and it's pretty irritating.

It randomly loses/drops my home Wi-Fi connection and I have to restart the laptop before it can see the available Wi-Fi again.

There is no consistency in the time periods between dropping the Wi-Fi. Sometimes it can happen twice in a day and sometimes it can go days or weeks before doing it.

I can be working away online without a problem and then suddenly I realise I don't have a connection and the laptop has dropped the Wi-Fi. But if you then go to settings it can't see any of my Wi-Fi connections.

If I turn Wi-Fi on and off on the laptop it still can't see any of the connections until I restart the laptop. When it restarts it just picks up the Wi-Fi like normal and everything is fine for whatever period elapses until it loses it again.

I have tried closing down all of the apps that I usually have running or closing them sequentially to see if not having one of them up and running stops the problem. But as far as I can tell this has made no difference and it still erratically drops the Wi-Fi and has to be restarted.

One thing which did make a difference for a period was my son suggested telling it to forget all the Wi-Fi connections and clear my internet history cache and then restart the computer and find the best Wi-Fi connection and start using it. After I did that it didn't drop the Wi-Fi for about 3 months so I thought it had solved the problem. But then it started doing it again and is back to its usual pattern.

Hi I've had the laptop for about 4 years and the problem started about 1 year ago. I recall it started just after I had done a software update but I don't know if the two are connected and it has had lots of updates since.

My Wi-Fi has always been via StarLink throughout the 4 years I've been using the laptop. None of my other devices or the other laptops in the house have this problem.

Apart from that this Dell laptop seems to work pretty well so any suggestions gratefully received.

[cliffe_mafia]

I was speaking to a colleague on a call a couple of days ago. He said he'd had to get a new laptop because of what sounded like the same or very similar issue with him losing wifi at random intervals with his 3-4 year old Dell. He's very tech savvy and couldn't figure it out.

[JoshSm]

Get a different WiFi card? They're cheap, even for the latest types by Intel etc.

Or plug in a cheap USB one and see if that has the same problems.

In my experience it's probably hardware/drivers rather than the OS.

[A993LAD]

JoshSm said:

Get a different WiFi card? They're cheap, even for the latest types by Intel etc.

Or plug in a cheap USB one and see if that has the same problems.

In my experience it's probably hardware/drivers rather than the OS.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Is the card inside the laptop? and is it easy to access?

Or would you recommend just buying a usb one instead?

[Road2Ruin]

A993LAD said:

JoshSm said:

Get a different WiFi card? They're cheap, even for the latest types by Intel etc.

Or plug in a cheap USB one and see if that has the same problems.

In my experience it's probably hardware/drivers rather than the OS.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Is the card inside the laptop? and is it easy to access?

Or would you recommend just buying a usb one instead?

On a laptop it will be part of the motherboard, so you will have to disable it via windows. You possible don't have any expansion slots, so you will need a USB WiFi dongle.

[99flake]

A993LAD said:

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Is the card inside the laptop? and is it easy to access?

Or would you recommend just buying a usb one instead?

It will be a mini PCI-E card or M.2 card. To get at it, you will need to remove the base of the laptop, depending on the model this will be really easy, or a pig!

Once inside, you will see the card with two wires going to tiny (I-PEX) connectors (normally one white and one black), these need to be popped off. There will be a screw the other end of the WiFi card to hold it down, unscrew and the card will spring up from the socket, gently pull out.

New card goes in, and re-install cables, screw and back of laptop.

It is actually quite simple, however I would recommend trying a USB one first, this will prove what the issue is, without opening the machine up. Plus it can be kept as a useful spare after,

As an aside, Windows 10 (11 seems to suffer less so) has this horrible habit of keeping the network stack up, due to fast start, and reboots and shutdowns don't always clear it.

Try the following:

Open a command prompt (either find it in the start menu or press the Windows key + R and then type cmd into the box that comes up and press enter).

Into the command prompt, type the following:

shutdown -s -t 0

Then press enter. You can change the 0 at the end for another number, this is just the time until shutdown.

This will shut the machine down straight away (make sure you have saved your work before pressing enter) and perform a shutdown as if you have yanked the battery out. This has cleared odd wifi behaviour for me on multiple occasions on different laptops (think well over 100 instances).

Turn laptop back on and see how you get on.

[outnumbered]

FWIW I've got a Dell laptop that was bought from the Dell Outlet that developed this same issue.

I just bought a TP-Link USB Wifi dongle and that works fine, haven't bothered to try and fix the internal one.

[A993LAD]

Ok thanks for all the tips guys. I have ordered a Wi-Fi dongle and hopefully that will resolve the issue.

[noyb]

if it's an XPS or such then some have the Killer wifi 'card' soldered to the motherboard so you have no chance of swapping it out. If i remember correctly, some had the Intel 'card' which you could remove/replace.
pot luck really

the aggro with Dell laptop wifi puts me off.

[jingars]

I have had a works-supplied Dell Vostro which has been faultless for the 3 years I have had it. That will have jinxed it...

For mine, I installed the Dell Command software to check for updates. This covers items such as BIOS and drivers.

Additionally, I installed the Intel Driver & Support Assistant. This picks up new drivers for WiFi and Bluetooth.

These might be worth a go?

[cw2k]

The WHQL drivers that tend to get installed by windows can be very old builds. Going for their latest driver from the WiFi adaptors manufacturer can resolve this, we had dropouts with wifi6 especially when streaming media with the default drivers but updating to the latest Intel ones resolved that.

[noyb]

I tried all of them with both my XPS laptops, dell is always behind the actual manufacturer in terms of driver releases.
Going directly to the Killer networks for newer versions sometimes worked only to be messed up later by dell updates or windows.