Lose wireless connection, restart brings it back

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Aug 14, 2015
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With my current HP 15 laptop, which is just a few months old, this last week it will lose the internet connection several times a day. The rest of the devices on the house , connected either wired or wirelessly to the same router, will all connect and stay online. With me, I not only get kicked offline, but the laptop cannot see any other internet connections. It stays like this until I reboot, then all is well. I have stayed online after a reboot anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours.

I used the HP support assistant and there were no driver updates for my wireless card.

Any suggestions? I'd like to deal with this problem at the root, or at least, find some quicker way of dealing with it than by having to reboot.
 
@ Paul.....does your wireless access point have the capability of having it's firmware updated. If so, I would at least check that it is using the most current version.
 
Probably an issue created by a windows update, a similar issue was discussed before the update was pushed out. If you have a physical switch for wifi, turn it off and on, if not the Network troubleshooter, it turns the wifi on and off again in device manager.
 
In addition.
There is always a chance that the Wifi card in the laptop is bad or weak.
I had to change the one in the Dell once.
 
I just had the router do an update check for firmware, and none were found.

@ Paul.....does your wireless access point have the capability of having it's firmware updated. If so, I would at least check that it is using the most current version.


Hopefully its not that. I'm on Windows Insider (wondering if they were doing tweaks to the start menu) and now I have to wait till it rolls out to mainstream release to uninstall (if I don't want a fresh install of W11, which I don't). I just looked and I can uninstall two specific updates. I'll take the one that was most recent, and see if that makes any difference. I have run the networking troubleshooter a couple of times (including after I read your message) but it found nothing. It was having this problem before the troubleshooter, and continued after I ran it the first time. I did manually turn off wifi for the laptop, then turn it on again--I don't know if that would accomplish the same thing as what you were talking about.
Probably an issue created by a windows update, a similar issue was discussed before the update was pushed out. If you have a physical switch for wifi, turn it off and on, if not the Network troubleshooter, it turns the wifi on and off again in device manager.


I can do that, but I'd like to troubleshoot this first.
Warranty or store return/exchange ?
 
I can do that, but I'd like to troubleshoot this first.
Since no other devices on your network have issues, there's no firmware updates for the wireless card, and you're up-to-date with Windows, I'm guessing it's a hardware issue and you can't "solve" that without replacing it.
 
Thanks for sucking away all my optimism for an easy fix. :)

Seriously, I just uninstalled the latest Windows Update, although I'm not optimistic that this is the cause. Yeah if it keeps up I'll contact the retailer or HP and see what can be done.

Since no other devices on your network have issues, there's no firmware updates for the wireless card, and you're up-to-date with Windows, I'm guessing it's a hardware issue and you can't "solve" that without replacing it.
 
I just got some insight. It happened again 10 mins ago, and I found an HP Support Assistant that had its own Network troubleshooting utility. It found something, that looks like it could genuinely be the problem (see the red box):
HP Network.png


Only problem is, I cannot seem to find this network 2. This is what I see when I go to Windows Hardware and Connection Properties.

Name: Local Area Connection* 1 Description: Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter Physical address (MAC): 16:13:33:42:17:53 Status: Not operational Maximum transmission unit: 1500 IPv4 address: 169.254.238.183/16 IPv6 address: fe80::eda9:903d:4f19:eeb7%14/64 DNS servers: fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1 (Unencrypted) fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1 (Unencrypted) fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1 (Unencrypted) Connectivity (IPv4/IPv6): Disconnected Name: Wi-Fi Description: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Adapter Physical address (MAC): 14:13:33:42:17:53 Status: Operational Maximum transmission unit: 1500 Link speed (Receive/Transmit): 72/72 (Mbps) DHCP enabled: Yes DHCP servers: 192.168.1.1 DHCP lease obtained: ‎Tuesday, ‎June ‎28, ‎2022 6:43:34 PM DHCP lease expires: ‎Wednesday, ‎June ‎29, ‎2022 6:43:34 PM IPv4 address: 192.168.1.115/24 IPv6 address: 2600:6c51:613f:3847:1069:cab5:feae:aba9/64, 2600:6c51:613f:3847:7d20:8b3c:c298:8366/128, fe80::1069:cab5:feae:aba9%19/64 IPv4 default gateway: 192.168.1.1 IPv6 default gateway: fe80::ea9f:80ff:fefc:425e%19 DNS servers: 2600:6c51:613f:3847:ea9f:80ff:fefc:425e (Unencrypted) 192.168.1.1 (Unencrypted) Network name: proplan Network category: Public Connectivity (IPv4/IPv6): Connected to Internet Proxy Auto Detect: On

So should I change the IP settings for my realtek adapter (which I guess HP Support Assistant is calling LAC 2)? I'm not sure how to do this. I can rightclick on my wifi network card, but don't see how to change IP settings like this....
 
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JethroBob, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Is disabling this virtual wireless adapter that allows my laptop to be a hotspot--is this related to the problem of my laptop losing internet access intermittently? Or is this a separate problem?

Reason I'm asking, is that if its not related to resolving my internet connectivity issue, I'd prefer just to leave it as is.
 
I don't know, that's my best guess. Your DHCP is on, meaning your router is assigning the IP address your computer should be using. Only other thing I can maybe think of is, if you are using two routers (or your computer is switching between yours and a neighbors). Meaning it's being assigned an address from somewhere else. That idea makes more sense. Are there other networks you have logged into within range?

If not, I think that virtual wifi card is requesting its own ip causing you to lose connection.

You can always enable it as easily as disabling it.
 
Fair enough. So far, I have not been kicked offline today, which is a first for the past few days. I uninstalled a recent Windows update yesterday evening, so I'm thinking that might have done the trick. If not, I'll try the suggestion about disabling my virtual hotspot.
 
I haven't been kicked offline since I uninstalled Windows Update 5014770 Tuesday evening. Now I am using an Insider build, so I don't think this update has been released to the general public yet. Probably by the time it is, a fix will be in the mix. But I mentioned which update I uninstalled, so people can do the same if they get it in the future and have this problem.
 
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