Question [Solved] Oddball case of networking issue

[Ontos106]

So, cutting to the chase, system is W10, fully up to date drivers across the board. I use a wifi card, with the option of using an ethernet cable. About 24h ago, had noticed my packet loss and ping went from 0/30-40 to anywhere from 3-19% and ping all over the board, getting as low as 78. Checked with other devices, nothing similar. Checked my equipment on the modem and router side, no issues. Checked the network admin side of things through the spectrum app, nothing cropping up there. Hadn't done any recent installs nor uninstalls, no new downloads either, but, I did have a windows update set to update automatically while I was asleep. Woke up this morning, and my network is connected, intermittently, and, when it is connected, can't seem to find a DNS gateway at all. Tried the ol reliable power cycle on both PC and modem and router, verified if other devices are having the same issue, nothing seems to work. I ran network diagnostics, and was getting error codes and diagnostic "fixes" across the board. Weirdest I got was one saying something to the tune of "my network admin will not allow you to connect to this network", all the way to "unable to locate a network gateway".

Now, here's the weird thing, right; tried using a wifi hotspot, same issues. Doubly weird, zero issues when hardwired with a Cat5 plumbed directly to the networking equipment. I've checked drivers, I've checked the windows update, I can't seem to find much info on this kind of issue to be honest. My best guess is maybe something with the registry??

 

[dwd999]

So, cutting to the chase, system is W10, fully up to date drivers across the board. I use a wifi card, with the option of using an ethernet cable. About 24h ago, had noticed my packet loss and ping went from 0/30-40 to anywhere from 3-19% and ping all over the board, getting as low as 78. Checked with other devices, nothing similar. Checked my equipment on the modem and router side, no issues. Checked the network admin side of things through the spectrum app, nothing cropping up there. Hadn't done any recent installs nor uninstalls, no new downloads either, but, I did have a windows update set to update automatically while I was asleep. Woke up this morning, and my network is connected, intermittently, and, when it is connected, can't seem to find a DNS gateway at all. Tried the ol reliable power cycle on both PC and modem and router, verified if other devices are having the same issue, nothing seems to work. I ran network diagnostics, and was getting error codes and diagnostic "fixes" across the board. Weirdest I got was one saying something to the tune of "my network admin will not allow you to connect to this network", all the way to "unable to locate a network gateway".

Now, here's the weird thing, right; tried using a wifi hotspot, same issues. Doubly weird, zero issues when hardwired with a Cat5 plumbed directly to the networking equipment. I've checked drivers, I've checked the windows update, I can't seem to find much info on this kind of issue to be honest. My best guess is maybe something with the registry??

Not sure why anyone would use inferior wifi when superior ethernet is available. Anyway, what kind of neighborhood wifi situation are you in; are there neighbors near enough using the same wifi channel that could be interfering with your signal? You can download free wifi analyzers from the microsoft store to check traffic on whatever channel you're using.

 

[Murissokah]

I would start by looking at signal quality on the WiFi. I don't know if you are using a notebook, but if possible try using them very close to limit the impact of external interferrence, just so we know if that helps. If so, then you could try different channels to see if anything works better.

If signal quality is not the issue, you could try booting a live ISO of an OS (ubuntu or something like that) to see if it still happens. That will let you know if the issue is within your OS or not.

Least likely, but still worth a look, check if there are any unwanted guests in the network. If your router is your DHCP server you should have a list of leases somewhere, check that to see if anything unknown has a recent lease. If so, I would change SSID and password.

 

[Ontos106]

I would start by looking at signal quality on the WiFi. I don't know if you are using a notebook, but if possible try using them very close to limit the impact of external interferrence, just so we know if that helps. If so, then you could try different channels to see if anything works better.

If signal quality is not the issue, you could try booting a live ISO of an OS (ubuntu or something like that) to see if it still happens. That will let you know if the issue is within your OS or not.

Least likely, but still worth a look, check if there are any unwanted guests in the network. If your router is your DHCP server you should have a list of leases somewhere, check that to see if anything unknown has a recent lease. If so, I would change SSID and password.

I did a sfc/scannow/run command, and it seems to have fixed it. It did report back there were some registry errors that were corrected.

 

[Murissokah]

Glad to hear you worked it out.