[SOLVED] Internet connection problems with ASUS PCE-AC56 PCIe WiFi adapter ?

[LiquidThundr]

So to fully describe my problem and the situation I'm in I'll need to start back in December of 2019. I had just build a new computer with the ASUS PCE-AC56 wifi adapter (link) and that was that. The adapter worked great until around the start of this year. At the start of this year I switched from a NETGEAR modem router combo (link) to a NETGEAR Nighthawk RAX50S AX5400 (link) because I was just borrowing the modem router combo from a friend and he wanted it back. When I switched to the AX5400 I immediately knew something was wrong. The first thing I noticed was that I was not able to connect to the 2.4 GHz WiFi network at all. When I would select the network Windows would spin for a while and then say "Can't connect to this network". I could get it to connect sometimes but it would just disconnect the second I tried to load a web page or anything.

I thought that was strange but didn't really care because I was still able to connect and use the 5 GHz WiFi network. Within a couple hours of using the 5 GHz network though I noticed that I had lost internet entirely without windows saying it had disconnected from the network or it saying "Connected, no internet". The only way I could get back online was by turning my WiFi adapter on and then off again. I lived like this for a little while but then the problem started happening every 1 to 2 hours. I did some research on the problem and tried almost every possible solution I found: install new drivers, do a network reset, run some commands I found on microsoft.com to reset some of the networking stuff (I really don't know what the commands were doing).

Eventually I settled on the problem being that the Nighthawk AX5400 5 GHz network was using 802.11ax protocol and my ASUS adapter only supported up to 802.11ac. I changed the router settings to not use the 802.11ax protocol but still the problem persisted. I eventually settled on buying a new router that didn't support 802.11ax at all. I bought the NETGEAR Nighthawk R7350 AC2400 (link). After setting up that router I still was having the same problems with the 2.4 GHz network as I was with the Nighthawk AX5400 but now I couldn't even find the 5 GHz network. I again tried updating my drivers and doing a network reset but still found no solution. Which lead me here writing this forum post hoping someone on Tom's Hardware can give me some insight.

To give some more information I live with 3 other people and none of them have any trouble connecting to either network. I also have two other laptops which have no trouble connecting to either network as well. I've also thought maybe my computer was in a network dead zone so I moved it around a little and performed some network strength tests on my phone and found that my computer is not in a dead zone. I also tried unplugging and re-plugging my WiFi adapter into my motherboard as I thought it may have come loose, but that didn't do anything.

I am seriously out of ideas for what else could be wrong. The one solution staring me in the face is buying a new WiFi adapter for my PC but I'd rather save that as a last resort (in case that doesn't work as well). Any response is greatly appreciated as I feel like I'm going crazy trying to solve this problem.

EDIT: I have a modem that was provided by my ISP that I've been using with the various routers.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Unlike the borrowed unit that you were using, the NETGEAR Nighthawk RAX50S AX5400 is not a modem/router combo. It's just a router.

You'll have couple it to a separate modem or exchange it for a router/modem combo.

 

[bill001g]

The wifi card you have it one of the better ones and has good driver support.....just be sure that microsoft did not replace the driver with one of their updates.
Do you still have both routers you purchased. Although kinda silly for such a expensive device you could use it to test if it is actually the wifi nic card is bad.

What you can do is set the second router to run in "client" mode. Not exactly sure what this is called but most the fancy equipment has the ability to run as wifi repeaters now days which means it might also have a just the client mode. What you can do it connect your pc to the second router
via ethernet and use it as a remote nic card. Some people actually do this because it is hard to get a nic card that does say 4x4 mimo on wifi6 with 160mhz. This is how the testing/review places gets those massively large numbers, but it is still a wifi signal and does not compare to ethernet.

 

[LiquidThundr]

Unlike the borrowed unit that you were using, the NETGEAR Nighthawk RAX50S AX5400 is not a modem/router combo. It's just a router.

You'll have couple it to a separate modem or exchange it for a router/modem combo.

Sorry I forgot to specify in the original post. I have a modem provided to me by my ISP. I am not just trying to connect to the internet via a router.

 

[LiquidThundr]

The wifi card you have it one of the better ones and has good driver support.....just be sure that microsoft did not replace the driver with one of their updates.
Do you still have both routers you purchased. Although kinda silly for such a expensive device you could use it to test if it is actually the wifi nic card is bad.

What you can do is set the second router to run in "client" mode. Not exactly sure what this is called but most the fancy equipment has the ability to run as wifi repeaters now days which means it might also have a just the client mode. What you can do it connect your pc to the second router
via ethernet and use it as a remote nic card. Some people actually do this because it is hard to get a nic card that does say 4x4 mimo on wifi6 with 160mhz. This is how the testing/review places gets those massively large numbers, but it is still a wifi signal and does not compare to ethernet.

So last night I installed the driver from ASUS's website and installed it but that didn't work. I think I'll give this another try and make sure I remove all the other drivers on my machine. Today is the last day I'll have both routers (I need to return the first one today) so I'll see if I can get one running in client mode and connect it to my computer via ethernet.

 

[LiquidThundr]

The wifi card you have it one of the better ones and has good driver support.....just be sure that microsoft did not replace the driver with one of their updates.
Do you still have both routers you purchased. Although kinda silly for such a expensive device you could use it to test if it is actually the wifi nic card is bad.

What you can do is set the second router to run in "client" mode. Not exactly sure what this is called but most the fancy equipment has the ability to run as wifi repeaters now days which means it might also have a just the client mode. What you can do it connect your pc to the second router
via ethernet and use it as a remote nic card. Some people actually do this because it is hard to get a nic card that does say 4x4 mimo on wifi6 with 160mhz. This is how the testing/review places gets those massively large numbers, but it is still a wifi signal and does not compare to ethernet.

Update on running the router in bridge mode. That worked I was able to connect to the internet via the bridge mode router. Another update though, after talking with my brother he told me his 5 GHz WiFi network was running on channel 153 while mine was on Auto. I changed my channel to be 153 and now I can connect. This just confuses me further.

I thought the same logic might apply to the 2.4 GHz WiFi network so I tried a couple different channels but I was still never able to connect or get an internet connection.

What does this all mean???!

 

[bill001g]

Not sure about the 2.4g. Maybe the event log has some message. Could be something related to setting like WPA2/encryption or something. I would check that there is no channel width restriction that does not match. Setting everything to auto tends to work best.

Generally problems with actual channels is because you have equipment from different countries. For example you can't use channel 13 in the USA but almost everywhere else it is ok. If your router uses channel 13 and the device is from the USA you will not even see the SSID to even attempt to connect to.

5g is more complex because of all the different rules by country. It also has weather radar avoidance things. Generally you are safest using channel around 40 since that is allowed almost everywhere. Numbers near 153 are also a good second choice, many countries allow that.

5g tends to be more complex to setup sometimes. Some routers if you were to set it to 40 it would only run 20mhz channels but if you set it 42 it would run 20,40 or 80. This varies a lot between routers. Some are smarter than others.

 

[LiquidThundr]

Not sure about the 2.4g. Maybe the event log has some message. Could be something related to setting like WPA2/encryption or something. I would check that there is no channel width restriction that does not match. Setting everything to auto tends to work best.

Generally problems with actual channels is because you have equipment from different countries. For example you can't use channel 13 in the USA but almost everywhere else it is ok. If your router uses channel 13 and the device is from the USA you will not even see the SSID to even attempt to connect to.

5g is more complex because of all the different rules by country. It also has weather radar avoidance things. Generally you are safest using channel around 40 since that is allowed almost everywhere. Numbers near 153 are also a good second choice, many countries allow that.

5g tends to be more complex to setup sometimes. Some routers if you were to set it to 40 it would only run 20mhz channels but if you set it 42 it would run 20,40 or 80. This varies a lot between routers. Some are smarter than others.

Where would I find the event log?

 

[bill001g]

Would be nice if microsoft did not constantly change things.

You should be able to find it by searching for event log after you push the windows key. Event log though has lots and lots of crap so you may have to dig around even after you get the app launched.

 

[LiquidThundr]

So the event log proved to be unusable. But I found something on stack overflow saying I should run "netsh wlan show wlanreport" intead. I attempted to connect to my 2.4 GHz WiFi network and got these tables:

The first three tables are me trying to connect to the network and windows saying "Can't connect to this network", and the last one is when I was able to connect but got hit with the "Connected, No Internet" message. I don't really know what to make of this. Is it something with my security? I wouldn't think so because the 5 GHz network and the 2.4 GHz network use the same security. If you don't know what this means either I think I should just count my blessings and be happy that I got the 5 GHz network to work.

 

[bill001g]

Most times you only use 2.4 when the 5g signal is too weak to get good coverage.

I am not sure about auto config. Most the discussion I have seen talk about disabling it. Seems the feature will cause the wifi connection to drop every couple minutes for some people while it looks for a different connection. Not sure the status on that issue, microsoft seems to break things with all their stupid updates they force on people. I mean you could try to disable it and see if it does anything different. It is some command line you type in and I have not found a example with a quick search.

 

[LiquidThundr]

Yeah, I'm pretty much over it at this point. Thanks for all the help bill001g.