How To Fix a WiFi That Disconnects or Drops

There is nothing more annoying than a WiFi Internet connection being dropped randomly. This is especially annoying if you are gaming or streaming a movie because there is no warning. It just happens. You then reboot your WiFi and troubleshoot and many times it can be fixed until the next time! Sometimes, it reconnects for a while and then drops the connection again.

There are basically three things that may cause this:

1. You are running Win 10 with latest updates.

2. Your WiFi card or adapter in your computer is failing and needs updating.

3. Your settings are not correct.

Of course, many suspect that your ISP is causing your connection to fail because you are streaming copyrighted material. Also, using VPN could trigger a ISP timed connection drop, anywhere from 10-30 minutes. This could make streaming a movie quite difficult unless your Internet download speeds are over 1000 megabyte per second. While ISP's claim they do not restrict the use of VPN, I suspect their policy might be if their server detects a VPN connection, a timer automatically begins for the connection to be timed out.

There 3 Things to Try

Windows 10 is well known to have timed out Internet issues with its updates, depending on the WiFi used. From personal experience, My Dell Latitude laptop does. The easy fix is to simply change the Power Management settings that are located in your WiFi properties configuration. Win 10 will always have this setting box checked to save power if not in use. You need to uncheck the box. For some reason, when checked, this feature causes the WIFi connection to drop after a period of time. If your other WiFi devices also have the same problem, then, most likely the issue with your router, not Win 10.

Use the following steps:

1. Right-click your WiFi icon in the bottom right corner of your PC desktop and open Network and Sharing Center.
2. Click Change adapter settings.
3. Click on WiFi.
4. Click on Properties.
5. Click on Configure.
6. Click on Power Management tab.
7. If the first box is checked, uncheck the box, so the computer will not turn off to save power.

If this does not make your connection stable, try resetting the WiFi AutoConfig service. To do this:

1. Press Windows logo key and R simultaneously. When the window pops-up, type services.msc and press Enter.
2. Look for WLAN AutoConfig. The services list is often long, but scroll down until you see it. When you find it, double-click on it.
3. The WLAN AutoConfig properties will display. If not already, change the current settings to Automatic.
4. Click Apply and then OK to save.

The last thing is simply downloading the latest WiFi driver for your system. There are many places you can do this. Since I have made the changes to my own computer using the first two fixes, my Internet connection is much more reliable when streaming material even using VPN.