Why Is My Laptop Killing My Wifi?
Hey! In this week’s Tech 911 – the column in which I try to find answers to your common and unclear technical questions – we have a strong contender for Ha of the Year, if any such award existed. I’ve found that the best, most dizzying problems tend to be home networking, and this week’s problem is a real dead end.
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Lifehacker reader Simon explains:
“For several years now, my laptop (a refurbished 2016 Acer Aspire V-3) has been disrupting my home Internet shortly after connecting to a router. Sometimes the internet crashes in a matter of seconds. In other cases, it takes several days. But usually this is within 10 minutes.
This does not happen when I connect with a wired connection to a router or repeater and this is just my laptop (my wife’s laptop, our phones and our raspberry pi are working fine). Also, my laptop is not doing any harm anywhere; no other wireless network had this problem (I’m sure many cafes appreciate it).
And when I say that it destroys my internet, I mean the failure of both the router and the modem. Everyone loses the connection to the router and both must be turned off and on to turn the connection back on. “
Well. I cannot say that I have ever encountered this problem and I have tested an unknown number of routers with many different laptops and devices. You have a fun but challenging task. Elsewhere in your email, you mentioned that you had this problem for several years and asked for help from others. So, some of my suggestions may seem a little general; I apologize in advance if you’ve heard them before.
The best and easiest way to fix it is to replace your router – Archer C7 from TP-Link, which you also indicated in the email. There are actually several different hardware versions of the Archer C7, and it is entirely possible that the one you have is faulty, fussy, or has other f-words of your choice. A quick scan of TP-Link’s online forums reveals that others have encountered similar issues when connecting other laptops to the Archer C7, so you are not alone. And of course, replacing a router will be much cheaper than replacing a laptop.
Talk to your fanatical friends and see if anyone has a wireless router that you can borrow for a week or so. Set it up and see if everything stops on your laptop. If not, buy a new router. I recommend taking a closer look at the D-Link DIR-867, which matches the wireless capabilities of the Archer C7, costs about the same and is not overkill for your needs.
(On my own behalf, I apologize that you went through this with a TP-Link router. In my past life, I recommended the Archer C7 for several years as the best router for my money. It is still generally excellent, but apparently it has problems with some laptop configurations and that’s a pretty big problem if you get hurt.)
If you are determined to find a solution to this problem without spending money on it, there are a few more tips you can try. I’m sure everyone you spoke to told you to update your router’s firmware. If not, do it . Acer has stopped offering new drivers since June 2016, so try getting updated drivers directly from Intel .
If the new firmware doesn’t help, you can always go for a nuclear strike: back up your important files and restart your laptop . But I’m not sure if this will help. Instead, try resetting your router to factory default settings. This may not fix the problem at all if there is a compatibility issue between your laptop’s wireless card and your router, but you have nothing to lose if you’re willing to replace your router to fix the problem.
You can also go crazy and flash your Archer C7 with a third-party firmware like DD-WRT , which can also clear things up. Just make sure you don’t install this on an early version of Archer C7 (v1), which could kill your 5GHz connection.
The more I write this – and the more I read about people having a similar problem with other laptops and the Archer C7, as well as your explanation that this problem only seems to happen when your laptop is connected to the Archer C7 – the more I I think the problem is with your router. After all, your little Thanos on a laptop seems to work great everywhere, so I don’t think he’s doing anything out of the ordinary that would magically destroy your home network and anyone else’s (and only over Wi-Fi).
So, in order of importance, let’s summarize the solutions: new router firmware, new laptop drivers, resetting the router to factory defaults, flashing the router with third-party firmware, and then buying a new router (if nothing works). If you get to the end, be sure to keep the receipt for the new router just in case . If you still find that your laptop loves to consign your network to oblivion every time you connect, write the answer! We’ll figure it out.