WiFi Keeps disconnecting

[Bigdp123]

Hi I hope someone can help me. I have a g50 laptop which is intermittently dropping the WiFi signal. I have tried all the possible fixes online and it's still the same. I'm starting uni in a week and really need it to be working. Can someone please help?
Regards..

[atagunov]

Hi, I imagine different things can go wrong.. How does your signal strength measure: strong? Weak? I'm testing the theory that there is a problem with the wires going from your WiFi card to the antennas in the display lid.

How many WiFi networks have you tested it on? I imagine you probably have some sort of home network where this is happening. Have you tested it at some sort of Starbucks? At your friends? For lack of better options you may turn your mobile phone into a mobile hotspot (tethering) and see if your notebook can maintain a connection to your phone or if it gets dropped too.

In case others know more, do you happen to know which WiFi card your Thinkpad has got in it?

[Bigdp123]

Hi thanks for replying I've tested it at my house and 2 family members houses and the same thing happens. According to online it's a common thing on these laptops but I can't work out how to fix it at all.

[atagunov]

Ok, never worked with G series.. but if it's anything like T and X the WiFi modem is a separate card which can be replaced. A "small" issue T and X Thinkpads have got WiFi "whitelisting" e.g. a list of WiFi cards they will accept. The whitelist is in BIOS. So you either purchase a "correct" card that is on the list or you first remove the whitelist by flashing a custom BIOS and then put mostly whichever card you want.

Question 1: are you willing to disassemble and replace the WiFi card?

If the problem is common people have probably tried it.. Does searching online for stories about G50 WiFi card replacement turn up anything of interest?

[kfzhu1229]

Well one thing you can try without replacing the wifi card though is to clean the contacts of the wifi card. Many times bad contacts on the mPCI connector and/or the antennae can result in unstable wifi connection.

[Bigdp123]

Hi what about just buying a usb wireless adapter? Would that work and save me the trouble of opening laptop up etc?
Thanks

[kfzhu1229]

Hi what about just buying a usb wireless adapter? Would that work and save me the trouble of opening laptop up etc?

Yes but I find those to be extremely unreliable and most of them stick out on the side. If you drop your laptop RIP USB port.
Reseating the wifi card on a ThinkPad G50 is EXTREMELY easy (much easier than the T4x). There are a grand total of 4 steps.
See the guide here (in Japanese): https://download.lenovo.com/jp/mobiles_pdf/41W7875.pdf
It involves with taking out the battery, keyboard and the plastic above the keyboard. Go to Page 70 (where it says 1120 Mini PCI アダプター), if you need help with removing those three components, just click on the links in that Page 70. Otherwise just follow the image.

[RealBlackStuff]

Here's an English G50 HMM: https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mo ... es_hmm.pdf

[cadillacmike68]

The same thing happens with regularity on my T61 6463. It will be fine and the WiFi card will just shut down. A power off cycle is usually required to get it back.

[atagunov]

The same thing happens with regularity on my T61 6463

Hey, so have you found a solution for your T61? Better than restarting the laptop periodically?

[Bigdp123]

Does Windows manage the wireless connection on a Lenovo g50 or is some software responsible? If so how can I get windows to manage it? Thanks

[atagunov]

Does Windows manage the wireless connection on a Lenovo g50 or is some software responsible? If so how can I get windows to manage it? Thanks

I would imagine a significant amount of work is done by the WiFi card itself. It is both too costly and probably not fast enough to perform low level actions associated with the wireless connection on the main CPU. Then inside windows there is a piece of software known as "driver" that performs interaction between Windows kernel and other applications running on Windows and the wireless card. Using a correct/most suitable driver of course is rather important when using any perepherilas on a computer. This applies to WiFi cards too. These statements are all high level and theoretical of course I don't know particular details about your card and in fact we don't even know what card you have.

Sometimes issues can be resolved by replacing the driver for a device. If that was helpful in G50 case you probably would have found some information online when collecting info about the topic. Two advices that emerged in this topic so far were:

- open Thinkpad up, disconnect antenna wires from the WiFi card, remove WiFi card from its socket, clean it and the wire terminals with IPA, assemble everything back. There is a chance it will help
- consider replacing the WiFi card; to make sensible progress here we need to know which card you've got; it's probably possible to see it somewhere in Windows; also as you clean your current card you can read what's written on it and/or take photos

[Screamer]

According to online it's a common thing on these laptops but I can't work out how to fix it at all.

It appears that you have a Lenovo IdeaPad G50 of some sorts. One thing for sure is that it does not belong to this sub-forum, it belongs to the Non-ThinkPad sub-forum.

I have tried all the possible fixes online and it's still the same.

Could you explain what you have done? With no information on what you have tried, we have no idea what to suggest and we may even repeat the same fixes that you have tried.

Does Windows manage the wireless connection on a Lenovo g50 or is some software responsible? If so how can I get windows to manage it?

Windows manages only the power management routine (minimally) and the instructions to tell it to connect to an access point, the rest is handled by the software driver.

I don't know what you are trying to accomplish, but getting Windows to manage it won't change anything. What you have said is what Windows is currently doing, and that is the most it can do.

Let's make this easy for the both of us. First, what solutions have you tried to solve this problem? Second, what is your wireless LAN adapter? atagunov has asked this before, but you did not give an answer.

If you don't know how to find out your wireless LAN adapter's model and make, open up Device Manager and expand the 'Network adapters' category. Ignore any device that identifies itself as an Ethernet or a LAN device, as those are wired LAN devices. Once you have done that, tell us your wireless LAN adapter's name.

[Bigdp123]

Hi the wireless adapter is an Intel Dual Band Wireless AC3160. I have tried updating drivers etc as well as things like disabling Ethernet connection incase possible conflict as well as other possible solutions all to no avail..

[Screamer]

Where exactly did you get the updated drivers from? Did you click 'Update driver' in the Device Manager, or did you install the official driver release from Intel's website?

Have you tried setting the roaming aggressiveness of your AC 3160 to 'Lowest'?

[Bigdp123]

I updated drivers by clicking update driver.

[Screamer]

Microsoft generally doesn't keep track of driver updates as often as Intel when it comes to the drivers, as far as I know (which may explain the oddities going on with your AC 3160). I suggest installing the driver from Intel's website, then report back the results.

[Bigdp123]

Thanks for replying. Will I uninstall current driver's before I try and install the ones from intel site?

[Screamer]

Yes, but through the Device Manager.

Make sure you pick the right option as there are multiple drivers for different operating systems and their respective versions.

[cadillacmike68]

The same thing happens with regularity on my T61 6463

Hey, so have you found a solution for your T61? Better than restarting the laptop periodically?

Nope, I just power it off and restart it. I might clean it as noted earlier (and quoted below), or I might swap it out with another, but this was a very late model T61 so it probably has the latest WiFi card then available for a T61.

NOTE: these ThinkPad have what I consider a bad habit of shutting down the WiFi card when the machine is connected via wired Ethernet. And it stays down! I used this T61 on site with a wired connection quite often and whenever I got back home, I had to "troubleshoot" the "no available WiFi connections" error and have windoze re-enable the WiFi. but I haven't connected this T61 wired for quite some time.

... open Thinkpad up, disconnect antenna wires from the WiFi card, remove WiFi card from its socket, clean it and the wire terminals with IPA, assemble everything back. There is a chance it will help
- consider replacing the WiFi card; to make sensible progress here we need to know which card you've got; it's probably possible to see it somewhere in Windows; also as you clean your current card you can read what's written on it and/or take photos

You want me to clean it with beer?

[Bigdp123]

Yes, but through the Device Manager.

Make sure you pick the right option as there are multiple drivers for different operating systems and their respective versions.

This will be fun finding the right version. Thanks I'll try that and keep u updated

[Screamer]

You do know which is the appropriate driver, right?

If your current operating system is Windows 10 x86 for example, you'd download and install 'WiFi_21.10.1_PROSet32_Win10.exe'. If it is Windows 8.1 x64, it would be 'WiFi_17.16.0_PROSet64_Win8.exe'.

[Bigdp123]

Hi I downloaded and installed the drivers from intel website. The laptop is windows 10 64bit and still no joy.
Thanks for replying.

[Bigdp123]

I had installed the drivers from intel which were dated 2019. Just double checked driver properties for my WiFi adapter and driver date is 2015 which were the previous ones.

[Bigdp123]

Hi I have an update.
I opened up laptop as suggested and there was 2 connectors to network card and one of them wasnt even connected to the card. The thing is why would it occasionally connect to the internet? I'm thinking it was maybe pressing and making contact occasionally. Any thoughts?

[Screamer]

The laptop is windows 10 64bit and still no joy.

Have you tried setting the roaming aggressiveness to the lowest option, at the very least? You have a lot of options to play around with in the Device Manager for your AC 3160.

Just double checked driver properties for my WiFi adapter and driver date is 2015 which were the previous ones.

They might be older, but they might be more stable than the ones you had previously. That's just the driver roulette nowadays, some are horrible (even if they are newer) and some are better. Which is why I thought downloading the drivers directly from Intel would be a better gamble than Microsoft's update catalog.

I opened up laptop as suggested and there was 2 connectors to network card and one of them wasnt even connected to the card.

The unused connector is 'reserved' for WLAN adapters with 3 connectors. Your AC 3160 has only two, so that would make sense as it's left unconnected.

The thing is why would it occasionally connect to the internet?

I wouldn't know, but maybe it would be a good idea to re-insert the antenna cables as atagunov has suggested.

[Bigdp123]

What I mean was that when opened up i seen 2 small cables. One of them was connected to wireless adapter and the other was not but it looked like it was meant to be.

[Bigdp123]

I then connected the other one and switched in and it seems fine now. I've had it restarted a few times now and it's still fine. I seen videos online about changing the wireless adapter and it showed them disconnecting 2 wires before replacing. It was on identical laptop to mine.

[Bigdp123]

https://youtu.be/2jGVLRiBvsY

That's my laptop there. But when opened up one of those wires to the WiFi adapter wasn't connected. Hope that explains it. Thanks.

[Screamer]

Ah, I see. I never thought that would be the case, unless someone had previously messed with your laptop by some unknown means.