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March 1st, 2016 10:00
WiFi intermittent problem. Win 10 thinks it's connected when there's no Internet.
WiFi intermittent problem. I have a 2 month old Dell Inspiron 15 5559 with Intel dual band Wireless AC 3160 adapter. I connect via WiFi, start Pandora with Chrome, and everything works fine for a couple of hours. I monitor the WiFi status and notice that when the speed indicator temporarily drops to single digits, then resumes at 50 Mbps or higher a second or two later, my browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge) no longer work even though the icons indicate "connected, secured" and LAN activity continues. Pandora and all other browser activity ceases until I disconnect and reconnect. The router I first had this problem with is a TP-Link wireless-N that works perfectly with other PCs, but I bought & installed a D-Link D604 wireless AC router to see if that might fix the problem. It has the exact same problem on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Device Manager shows an Intel driver version 18.11.0.8 dated 6/22/2015 which appears normal and no ! or ? anywhere in the listing of devices.
So the obvious conclusion is that when the signal strength temporarily drops below 10 Mbps for a second or two, then comes back up, Windows 10 thinks it's got a good WiFi connection when it doesn't. Disconnecting and reconnecting always fixes the problem, but it's an obvious bug, and it's a pain.
DELL-Todd S
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March 2nd, 2016 07:00
Hi,
Glad you finally got that driver to install. Microsoft did a lot of things with Windows 10 trying to lower power consumption on laptops. In some ways that has caused some issues with wireless connectivity, making cards more susceptible to interference. Hopefully that driver will clear up a lot of the conflicts and problems that you're seeing.
Let us know how it goes.
Todd
DELL-Todd S
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March 1st, 2016 14:00
Hi,
On our support site we have an updated driver for the Intel 3160/3165 driver that may help you out.
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165/3160 WiFi Driver Version 18.30.0, A01
It came out on Feb 26th, so just this weekend. Try it and let us know if it helps with your connectivity, which can be very annoying. You also might want to see if there are other factors that could be causing some interference at specific times, that temporarily interrupt your connection.
To better help me troubleshoot this issue please right click on my Dell Todd username and send me a private message with the Dell Service Tag of your Inspiron 15 5559. Please keep all troubleshooting discussions here on these public threads so that others can see what is discussed.
Thank you,
Todd
WalterPG
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March 1st, 2016 18:00
OK, I just installed the driver update at 9:39 EST. That's a very difficult update to install because when you double-click it and tell it to install, nothing appears on the display for about 2 min. and then you get a simple little message saying "update failed" with absolutely no indication of why. Finally I decided to double-click and tell it to extract (the other option) into an empty folder. There were two .EXE files there so I tried SETUP.EXE. Again it churned for a minute or two, then said it couldn't install because there was a reboot pending. So after mumbling some four letter words I rebooted. FINALLY when I tried SETUP.EXE once more it did the install, upgrading me from the 18.11.0.8 version to 18.30.0.9 one without requesting a reboot. Device Manager confirms the 18.30.0.9 version, so now it's wait and see. Thanks for the info.
Note that I reposted this problem because when I click on "your posts" this thread is absent; I had to go another path to get here. Anyway I now have the update and will see how it goes.
As far as any RF interference is concerned, I don't know of anything that would cause this. We don't have any staticy devices in the house or neighborhood like flickering lights that I'm aware of, and as I said in my OP, this never happens with any of my other 5 PCs in this house including my 5 year old Toshiba L755 laptop which runs Windows 7.
WalterPG
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March 2nd, 2016 09:00
Todd, a couple of things. First, do you have any idea why this thread is not showing under the normal "your discussions" or "all discussions" listings? It seems to've disappeared from the face of the earth until I click on my name.
The other thing is that when I was installing that WiFi driver, I discovered that there were Windows 10 updates from MS requiring a reboot. With 10 Home you get ZERO notice when these things are being applied until you find out you need to reboot. That takes getting used to! It's no big deal to me that MS gives no choice about installing the updates, but we should at least get a notice that they're being applied so we know to look for sudden changes and hold off making other changes at the same time. If I'd known those Win updates were going on, I'd have waited a day to be sure things were stable before applying the WiFi driver update. As it is, I can't be certain which update(s) seems to've helped my WiFi problem.
DELL-Todd S
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March 3rd, 2016 09:00
HI,
There have been issues with the Dell Community forums over the past couple of days. People have reported the same symptoms that you are and our IT department is working with the platform vendor to correct the problems.
I'm glad that the updates fixed / helped you. I would recommend setting a Windows Restore point that you can roll back to in case there are problems in the future.
Thank you,
Todd