Windows 8.1 Causing Wi-Fi Connectivity Issues

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
I had the same problem with intel wireless N-7260 in Windows 8.1. I experienced it after using my computer from a standby. Disconneting and reconnecting solved my problem. After that I modified power saving options from powercfg.msc and device manager. I'll see how that works.
 
I just started having this problem yesterday after replacing my router with a newer one. The old router maxed out at G, the new one at N, after hooking the old router back up the problem went away. Every other device I have works just fine on both routers. I understand very well how networking and routing work and every thing is set correctly. Still troubleshooting but I'm thinking its a driver issue.
 
It is quite plainly a driver issue, and a common one at that. Put simply, the hardware (either the wireless card or the router) doesn't fit with the new default driver, or vice verse, the driver doesn't work with the OS. I had a Rosewill wireless card that worked with the default Windows 7 drivers, but if you installed Rosewill's driver, it didn't work. Every new OS has issues of driver compatibility. Some vendors, some models, get left out for one reason or another. It's a little pathetic that so much effort is being exerted at nit-picking incidental issues.
 
I actually had this same issue with limited connectivity, and when it was connected, it was at a very low speed connection 65Mbps. Having a WND450 Netgear router I should have a good 400Mbps.
So the Fix..... install the manufactures driver for my wireless adapter. I used the Windows 8 driver since Netgear didn't have an 8.1 driver. Connect at 450 Mbps, no drops, and no problems.

As I suggest to all my customers for hardware... ALWAYS get the manufactures drivers for hardware.
 
Some of the issues I've experienced are Windows 8.1 are a frequent momentary drops in WIFI (horrid while streaming a video) and Windows automatically configuring the IPV4 adapter to be under a DNS. I've found most people unable to have any internet connection need to go into their IPV4 settings and disable a manual DNS, setting it to automatically configure. Other than that, I haven't seen these other issues. 8.1 has been a very mixed bag for me. Love some of the features but it feels a bit more bloated. Standard 8 was much more seamless, IMO. I bet it's because they spent all of their time on that darn faux start menu. GET RID OF THE START MENU!
 
I had a very similar issue, mine was a bad driver. The Windows wireless driver for my model of wireless card in the laptop (don't have the model right now, I can edit this to include it later) had known bugs with 8.1. I installed an earlier version of the driver from the manufacturer website and used Windows 7 compatibility mode to resolve it. Just sad that normal users have to jump through so many hoops to keep their wireless working or to prevent the frequent BSODs that I was getting with this. This was a widespread bug that a simple Google search pulled up thousands of threads on Microsoft sites (along with other troubleshooting sites) that had no official answer, just a bunch of suggestions like turning off the G range, turning off power saving mode, etc. Strangely, since I went back to the Windows 7 version of the driver I have not had a single BSOD related to the wireless card. Had a few others, but different causes now.
 
Since upgrading my wife's laptop to 8.1, my ping to all wireless devices in the house has more than doubled. I can't even play Call of Duty on my desktop unless I plug it straight into the cable modem and disconnect the wireless router altogether, cutting off everything else in the house. I thought the router was going bad, but after reading this, I'm guessing it's not the router......
 

lol, yeah, great advice.

When I first noticed my system was broken beyond repair, I had to reinstall Windows 7.
Guess what; worse than Wifi connectivity issues, I couldn't go online at all. Luckily, I had a backup device to download the necessary drivers to.

A year later, after upgrading to Windows 8, no issues. After upgrading to 8.1, I couldn't use Wifi, but at least I could still use an Ethernet cable and update my drivers through Windows Update. No more Wifi issues ever since... it's like m-m-m-magic!!!

Bottom line: Maybe you shouldn't talk about things you know nothing about?
 
I have two system running on 8.1 using wifi. My HP uses a Intel wifi adapter 6235 and my 2nd system uses another wifi adapter (can't remember at the moment) and so far no issues at all. Maybe doing a bios update might fix the problem?
 
I had wi-fi issues with my router when Win 7 first came out. Same thing as they are describing. The router was only a year old but it turned out it needed a firmware update to make it fully win 7 compliant. The firmware update solved the problem, it's been fine since.
 
I had a friend bring his laptop over (Toshiba Satellite c55) with the same problem. We updated the driver and no changes. He was able to connect to my wireless at 25megs with no problems. He had a Cisco E1500 router. My router (Netgear WNDR4300) connects to my windows 8.1 laptop (Dell XPS12) just fine. He swapped his router with an older 802.11b and was able to connect at 15megs with no problems. So in his case, I think there is a setting or two in the router that needs to be adjusted.
 
I have a single boot Win 8.1 Pro (upgraded from 8 Pro) on a modern Core i7 PC on a wired/wireless network. I had an issue where I could not print to two previously network connected printers connected to another machine that is Core i3, dual booted WinXP Pro 32 and Win 7 Pro 64. The printers are older, an HP Lasertjet 1100 and HP 960C inkjet connected through the parallel and USB ports, respectively on the Core i3. In 8 I could print to either printer when the other machine was in either OS. However, after upgrading to 8.1, the machine would see the printers on the network then try to install the drivers from microsoft. It would inevitably fail the same way where it would continuously look for the drivers and time out or it would say that it couldn't see the printers. I finally tried Homegrouping the Win 8.1 and Win 7 computers (enabling printer sharing in the Homegroup) and that solved it. It saw the printers, already had the drivers ready and immediately was printing on both printers. I never could solve it in XP however, but I just boot the printer-connected PC into 7 and the printers are useable.
 
O.O that seems rather strange that people connecting to WiFi with a Windows 8.1 computer also on the network are getting dropped. I am pretty sure one of the people on my network recently moved to Windows 8.1 and my Windows Phone dropped its connection along with a Chrome Laptop. I thought it was just that Chrome OS was a piece of shit as the Windows Phone immediately reconnected. I switched it to Wireless-N only mode, not sure if it worked as the problems have not reproduced.
 


Wait I am not sure what you are saying. You upgraded your wifes laptop to 8.1 and now out of no where your desktop cannot play CoD online? How are those even connected? They are not. It sounds like your router is probably having issues. In no way could your wifes laptop on 8.1 affect your desktop.
 
My issues were with having hidden networks. I changed all my WiFi networks to broadcast theirs SSIDs and have not had intermittent connectivity issues since...
 
Just bought a cheap laptop from Staples about a month ago. It had windows 8 installed. I returned to the store to enquire about 8.1, they told me it was a free upgrade. I installed it, have no problems whatsoever. WIFI connectivity 100%
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom