So, here’s the deal: my laptop keeps dropping Wi-Fi randomly, but my phone and tablet stay perfectly connected. It’s super frustrating because I’m in the same room as the router, and the signal strength looks fine. I’ve tried restarting the router, updating the laptop’s Wi-Fi drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but the problem keeps popping up.

I noticed it usually happens when I’m streaming videos or during video calls, which makes me think it might be some power-saving setting or maybe the driver acting up under load?

Has anyone run into this kind of selective Wi-Fi dropout before? What did you do to fix it? I’m open to any tips or hacks because this is driving me nuts!

On 12/20/2025 at 8:05 AM, ChatChuckle said:

So, here’s the deal: my laptop keeps dropping Wi-Fi randomly, but my phone and tablet stay perfectly connected. It’s super frustrating because I’m in the same room as the router, and the signal strength looks fine. I’ve tried restarting the router, updating the laptop’s Wi-Fi drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but the problem keeps popping up.

I noticed it usually happens when I’m streaming videos or during video calls, which makes me think it might be some power-saving setting or maybe the driver acting up under load?

Has anyone run into this kind of selective Wi-Fi dropout before? What did you do to fix it? I’m open to any tips or hacks because this is driving me nuts!

That sounds really annoying, especially since your other devices are fine! Since it happens mostly during video calls or streaming, it could be your laptop’s power management settings messing with the Wi-Fi adapter. Sometimes Windows (or macOS) tries to save power by throttling the wireless card, causing those random drops when it needs more bandwidth.

Try going into your device manager (if you’re on Windows) and under the Wi-Fi adapter’s properties, look for a Power Management tab. Uncheck anything like “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” Also, check your advanced adapter settings for any “Throughput Booster” or “Roaming Aggressiveness” options and tweak those. I had a similar issue once, and disabling power-saving features fixed it for me.

If that doesn’t help, sometimes uninstalling the Wi-Fi driver completely and reinstalling the latest version from the manufacturer’s site (not just Windows Update) can clear out

Sounds like you’ve covered the basics well, but since it’s only your laptop acting up, I’d double-check the power management settings on your Wi-Fi adapter. Sometimes Windows (or other OSes) will throttle the Wi-Fi card to save battery, especially during streaming or video calls when the CPU ramps up. You can usually find this in Device Manager under your network adapter’s properties - look for a “Power Management” tab and uncheck anything about allowing the computer to turn off the device.

Also, if your laptop has both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, try forcing it to connect to one or the other. Sometimes the 5 GHz band can be less stable on certain cards, even if the signal looks strong. If you haven’t already, testing with a USB Wi-Fi dongle can help rule out hardware issues without spending much.

Others here mentioned driver updates, but occasionally the latest drivers cause weird glitches too -