How To Fix Wi-Fi Connection Issues In Windows? [Complete Guide]

Your WiFi connection stopped working, and you tried to resolve the issue by restarting your computer, disabled and enabled the wireless connection, finished troubleshooting the wireless connection, disabled your Windows Defender but none of these worked. If that’s the case, it is time to take a serious look at the problem and find out its solution.

A Wi-Fi connection is the best way to connect to the internet as it is fast, reliable, and wireless. However, you could encounter problems that restrict your Wi-Fi connection to stop working correctly. Today we are going to discuss various Wi-Fi connection errors that occur in Windows along with simple ways to resolve them.

What is Wi-Fi And How Does it Work?

Wi-Fi is the network technology that works on radio waves to provide users with internet connectivity. A connection is made using the wireless adapters, which creates hotspots in the vicinity of a wireless router that is connected to the ISP network. The full form of Wi-Fi is Wireless Fidelity and it allows you to connect to the internet almost instantaneously. The significant advantage of Wi-Fi over any other form of internet connection is that it is available with most devices, including gaming consoles, laptops, workstations, mobile phones, and even advanced printers. Wi-Fi helps in creating a wireless ecosystem where every other device is able to make connections with the other one and transfer or receive files.

Now coming to the part about how a Wi-Fi connection works, well, a Wi-Fi connection uses radio waves to transfer data across the devices connected within a network. A device should have a wireless adapter to receive the data over Wi-Fi. The signal which is sent on a network will be transmitted to the antenna first and from there it is sent to a decoder. The decoder in most cases is just your normal router. Once the router gets the signal, it will send the signal to the internet via a wired ethernet connection such as a fiber cable connection.

Benefits of Using Wi-Fi over LAN Cable

Given below are the advantages that you will get with Wi-Fi over LAN cables:

With WiFi, you don’t need any wires or cables to connect to the internet. Any device that supports a Wi-Fi connection can connect with a Wi-Fi network when present within its vicinity.
Wireless networks are cheaper than a wired connection as you don’t have to spend money on buying expensive networking cables. Also, it is easier to install a wireless connection in a new place as it requires no physical setup in the first place.
WiFi allows two devices to connect with each other and exchange data and files on the go.

Most Common Ways to Resolve Wi-Fi Connection Issues

There are times when your device’s Wi-Fi stops working even if your router is working fine. Given below, we have explained some of the most common ways to fix Wi-Fi issues that can occur when you are using a Windows system:

1. Wi-Fi is Connected, But You Can’t Access the Internet

Sometimes Windows shows that you are connected to the internet via Wi-Fi, and everything is working just fine. But still, when you open up the browser, it doesn’t load the desired web page, and you are not able to access the websites. Well, this is the case of faulty TCP/IP stack, IP address. To resolve this Wi-Fi connection issue, you need to follow the instructions discussed below.

First, you must run Windows’s native network troubleshooting tool. You can find it in the settings > update and security > Troubleshoot > internet connections.

If you are not able to reach the internet connection settings, you can use the command prompt and type in the following commands. Also, you need to press enter after each command.

Netsh Winsock reset
ipconfig/ release
Netsh int ip reset
ipconfig/ renew
ipconfig/ flushdns

If none of these commands works and you are still not able to make a connection with the internet services, then you need to try out some other quick fixes from this list.

2. Uninstall Your Network Adapter

You need to perform this fix if you have recently installed a Windows update in your system. To uninstall your network adapter, you need to go to the device manager by pressing [Windows key + X ].

Once the device manager is opened, you need to look for the network adapters and open it. After that, locate your network adapter in the list of network adapters and right-click on it to get a number of options. Click on the Uninstall button to remove the latest update from the computer.

In some cases, the windows machine will show you a prompt that says delete the driver software for this device. You need to click on this and then press OK.

Now restart your machine, and you will have the correct driver installed automatically.

3. Check Airplane Mode

Well, Windows 10 has its own airplane mode, and sometimes, by mistake, it may get activated. If your Wi-Fi is not working, you need to check the Wi-Fi icon on the bottom right corner and see if the Airplane mode is disabled or not.

4. Wi-Fi Doesn’t Have a Valid IP Configuration

In case you see a Wi-Fi connection doesn’t have a valid IP configuration, you might want to run the commands that we have mentioned in the first entry of this list. After running those commands, if the problem still persists, you need to configure your router settings manually by following the steps mentioned below:

Change Your Network Name And Password

A lot of users had said that when they changed the password and the user name of their network, the problem was resolved. The precise instruction to change the name of the network and the password varies from router to router. But you need to connect to your router via ethernet cable and enter your router’s admin page in your browser.

The device portal will open up, and from there, you can locate the necessary fields which you want to change. One thing you need to keep in mind is to keep the right type of Wi-Fi security when updating the password and the username.

Set The Wi-Fi Network’s Channel Width

Without getting into technical explanations, we want you to know that routers can broadcast their network on different channels. If there are too many routers present in the same place or in close proximity, the airwaves will become more cluttered, and thus, you will have issues with your Wi-Fi connection.

To set the channel width, you need to log in to your router’s setting and set the channel settings to auto. On the other hand, if there is no auto setting, you can try different channels and see if the problem of unstable networking still persists.

5. Wi-Fi Connection Speed Dropping Constantly

There are a number of methods that can help you restore your Wi-Fi speed.

First, you need to disable the network discovery by clicking the wireless internet connection from the network and sharing center. You will have a wireless properties button under the general section.
Secondly, you need to check your adapter’s power management settings. For that, you need to open your Network sharing center and click on your wireless connection name.
Here you need to click on the Properties button under the Activity section. After this, you will be taken to the Wi-Fi properties, where you will click on the configure button for your wireless connection. The following popup will take you to the network connection properties of your wireless router and provide you with the disable option. Under the power management tab, you will see “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.“
Lastly, you can disable the IPv6 properties, but in doing so, you might not be able to access some websites which

6. Changing Network Mode

For this, you need to open Network and Sharing Center, now select the change the adapter settings, and find out your wireless network adapter.
Then right-click on it and go to its properties.
In the properties section, you will find the configure option, click on that and go to the advanced tab, find out the Wireless mode, and click on it.
Now here, you have to change the wireless mode to the mode which is currently present on your router and then hit OK.

7. Turning Off The Bluetooth Discovery Mode

Sometimes Bluetooth can be responsible for the WiFi network issue, so you can try turning it off and see if it makes any changes to the network performance. Go to the Bluetooth settings and click on more Bluetooth options.

Then you need to locate “Allow Bluetooth devices to find the PC.” under the “Discovery” section toggle the switch to OFF position. This will make your laptop’s Bluetooth turn off.

8. Disable Your Antivirus/ Firewall

In some cases, your antivirus software or Windows Firewall restricts you to access the internet from a particular Wi-Fi connection. Thus, you can try turning off the antivirus program and/or Windows Firewall to check if your WiFi network starts working again.

Here’s how to turn off Windows Firewall:

First, you need to open your Control Panel, then go to your System and Security to locate Windows Firewall.

Now go to the “Turn Windows Firewall On or Off,” which is present in the sidebar of your firewall settings.

Turn off the Windows Firewall for both Public and Private networks and click on apply the settings. That’s all you have to do to make sure that the Windows Firewall is of no hindrance to your Wi-Fi connection.

9. Restore Your Windows to the Earlier Copy

If nothing works, try to restore your Windows to the version which had a working Wi-Fi connection. A lot of times, Windows ends up installing software which leads to the lousy performance of Wi-Fi adapters. To make your Windows roll back the update, you need to restart your computer in safe or repair mode, and then you get the option to roll back your Windows to the previous copy based on the date. Choose the right copy of your Windows, and all the new updates will be gone. This will make your Windows install and run all the previous drivers that were working perfectly fine before the update.

10. Contact Your ISP

The very last thing you can do is contact your ISP or the internet service provider and tell them about the problem you are facing. They might be able to help you with the problem, and if the internet has been disabled from their side, they will let you know how much time it’s going to take to get the internet connection back to normal.

Conclusion

These were a few of the quick fixes for Wi-Fi connection issues for Windows. You can try these out on your own or take the help of some IT professional to get it done for you. If the problem with your WiFi connection still continues, you may need to call the tech support of ISP and get in touch with them.

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Most Common Ways to Resolve Wi-Fi Connection Issues