I've got this annoying issue where my laptop keeps dropping the WiFi connection randomly, but get this — my phone, tablet, and even my partner's laptop stay perfectly connected the entire time. It's super frustrating because I’m in the same spot the whole time. I’ve tried restarting the router, updating the laptop’s network drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but nothing seems to stick. I’m running Windows 10, and the drops happen every 10-15 minutes or so. Sometimes the laptop just says "No Internet, secured" and then it reconnects after a few seconds, but sometimes it takes longer. I also checked to make sure airplane mode is off and that the power settings aren’t turning off the WiFi adapter to save power. Has anyone else experienced this kind of selective WiFi dropout? Any tweaks or fixes that helped you? Could it be a hardware problem with the laptop’s WiFi card, or is there some setting buried deep that I’m missing?

On 11/30/2025 at 5:05 PM, CleverCat589 said:

I've got this annoying issue where my laptop keeps dropping the WiFi connection randomly, but get this — my phone, tablet, and even my partner's laptop stay perfectly connected the entire time. It's super frustrating because I’m in the same spot the whole time. I’ve tried restarting the router, updating the laptop’s network drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but nothing seems to stick. I’m running Windows 10, and the drops happen every 10-15 minutes or so. Sometimes the laptop just says "No Internet, secured" and then it reconnects after a few seconds, but sometimes it takes longer. I also checked to make sure airplane mode is off and that the power settings aren’t turning off the WiFi adapter to save power. Has anyone else experienced this kind of selective WiFi dropout? Any tweaks or fixes that helped you? Could it be a hardware problem with the laptop’s WiFi card, or is there some setting buried deep that I’m missing?

Sounds like your laptop’s WiFi adapter might be struggling with the specific router or network settings, especially since other devices stay connected fine. One thing that helped me in a similar situation was disabling the "802.11n" mode or forcing the adapter to use only 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands separately, depending on what your router supports. Sometimes mixed modes cause instability on certain chipsets.

Also, check if your laptop’s WiFi driver has an advanced setting for “Roaming Aggressiveness” or “Wireless Mode” – setting roaming aggressiveness to low can reduce random drops. If you haven’t already, try running the Windows Network Troubleshooter and see if it flags anything unusual.

If none of that works, it might be worth testing with a USB WiFi dongle just to rule out hardware issues. I had to do that once when my laptop’s built-in card started acting up, and it made a world of difference