So I've been noticing something really strange with my laptop's WiFi lately. It keeps dropping the connection randomly, but my phone and tablet stay perfectly connected on the same network. It's super frustrating because I work from home and this makes video calls a nightmare.

I’ve tried restarting the router, updating my laptop’s drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but it still happens. Interestingly, it’s only when I’m a bit far from the router; closer up it’s totally fine.

Has anyone else dealt with random WiFi drops that only affect one device? What did you do to fix it? Could it be a hardware issue or maybe some weird setting I’m missing?

On 12/21/2025 at 4:25 PM, ChatterboxBub said:

So I've been noticing something really strange with my laptop's WiFi lately. It keeps dropping the connection randomly, but my phone and tablet stay perfectly connected on the same network. It's super frustrating because I work from home and this makes video calls a nightmare.

I’ve tried restarting the router, updating my laptop’s drivers, and even forgetting and reconnecting to the network, but it still happens. Interestingly, it’s only when I’m a bit far from the router; closer up it’s totally fine.

Has anyone else dealt with random WiFi drops that only affect one device? What did you do to fix it? Could it be a hardware issue or maybe some weird setting I’m missing?

Sounds like your laptop’s WiFi adapter might be struggling with weaker signals farther from the router. Since your other devices stay connected fine, it’s probably not the router itself. You could try disabling power-saving modes on your laptop’s WiFi adapter in Device Manager - sometimes those settings cause it to drop connections to save battery.

Also, if your router supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, check which one your laptop is connecting to. The 5GHz band has shorter range, so switching to 2.4GHz might help with stability when you’re farther away.

If none of that works, testing with a USB WiFi dongle could confirm if the internal adapter is the issue. That’s a quick way to rule out hardware problems without opening up your laptop.