Forcing 5ghz band on Windows 8

[HankThePropaneTank]

Hi, I have a dual band ASUS RT-N66U and a TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 pci wifi adapter which is dual band as well. I've been using the free trial of inSSIDer office which helps me figure my strength and what band I'm currently on. It used to default to the stronger band (switched between 2.4ghz and 5ghz) in the past, but now it seems to only prefer 2.4ghz even though 5ghz signal strength has a much lower -dBm.

So I've tried researching on how to make windows 8 or my pci card prefer 5ghz instead even if the signal strength might be weaker, but haven't found anything specifically mentioning my issue. Would love some help on this.

 

[das_stig]

if you have connected to both 2.4/5ghz networks, you will have two wifi profiles created.

Use Netsh to list them and then delete the profile for the 2.4, this should make you machine only connect to 5ghz.

At admin command prompt ...

netsh wlan show profiles

Identify your 2.4 profile and delete

netsh wlan delete profile name="ProfileName"

Now make the 5ghz automatically connect and give it priority

netsh wlan set profileparameter name=”ProfileName” connectionmode=automatic

Note that an ethernet cabled connection will always get priority over wifi.

 

[HankThePropaneTank]

Worked like a charm. Thanks!

 

[swotai]

I have a similar issue where windows 8 always prefer 2.4ghz N network over the 5ghz ac network on my airport extreme ac. An even simpler solution in this case : open your wifi adapter configuration by going to Network and sharing center > change adapter settings, right click on the wifi adapter > properties > configure> Advanced tab. Depending on your card there could be a few options to "band preference" (Prefer 802.11a, Prefer 802.11b/g for my card) or "disable bands" (disable 802.11a / disable 802.11b/g). (This might not work for the N where both 2.4 amd 5 are used.)