How to Fix Wi-Fi That Keeps Disconnecting or Dropping
Short answer
Note two things before changing anything: whether it affects one device or all of them, and whether the drops follow a pattern. One device means a driver or power-saving setting; all devices means the router or your provider. On Windows, the most common single cause is the adapter's Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power setting, which is enabled by default.
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An intermittent connection is harder to diagnose than one that is simply down, because most fixes appear to work — right up until it drops again twenty minutes later.
The way through is to record the pattern before changing anything. Two questions narrow the cause to one or two candidates.
Establish the pattern first
Question 1 — does it affect one device or all of them?
Watch during the next drop. If your laptop disconnects while a phone on the same network keeps streaming, the fault is on the laptop. If everything goes at once, the fault is the router or the line.
Question 2 — is there a schedule?
Keep a note for a day. The timing is often the diagnosis:
| Pattern | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Every few minutes, one device | Power management on that device’s adapter |
| Once or twice a day, all devices | DHCP lease renewal, or router firmware |
| Same time daily | A scheduled task — provider maintenance or a router reboot timer |
| After hours of uptime | The router overheating |
| When a specific appliance runs | Interference, usually a microwave |
| Only in one room | Coverage — the device is roaming between weak points |
| Worse in the evening | Channel congestion from neighbours |
If it is only one device
Turn off Wi-Fi power management (Windows)
This is the single most common cause of a laptop that drops Wi-Fi while everything else stays connected, and it is enabled by default.
- Press Win+X → Device Manager.
- Expand Network adapters, right-click your Wi-Fi adapter → Properties.
- Power Management tab → untick Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
- Click OK.
Then the power plan, which has its own separate setting:
Control Panel → Power Options → Change plan settings → Change advanced power settings → Wireless Adapter Settings → Power Saving Mode → set to Maximum Performance for both battery and plugged in.
Update or roll back the driver
If drops began after a Windows update, the driver is the first suspect.
Get the current driver from your laptop manufacturer’s support page for your exact model, rather than from Windows Update — generic drivers are a frequent cause of exactly this.
If the problem started after a driver update, roll it back instead: Device Manager → adapter → Properties → Driver tab → Roll Back Driver.
Forget and rejoin the network
This clears a stale saved profile, which can hold outdated security settings or a lease that no longer matches what the router expects.
- Windows: Settings → Network & internet → Wi-Fi → Manage known networks → Forget
- macOS: System Settings → Wi-Fi → Details → Forget This Network
- iPhone: Settings → Wi-Fi → i → Forget This Network
- Android: Settings → Network & internet → Internet → gear icon → Forget
Have the password ready.
Check for a MAC randomisation conflict
Modern phones and Windows 11 use a randomised MAC address per network for privacy. Some routers — particularly with MAC filtering or device-specific rules — handle this badly, and the device appears as a new unknown client on each reconnection.
If drops started when you got a new phone or after a Windows 11 upgrade, try turning it off for your home network only:
- iPhone: Settings → Wi-Fi → i → Private Wi-Fi Address off
- Android: Settings → network → gear → Privacy → Use device MAC
- Windows 11: Settings → Network & internet → Wi-Fi → Random hardware addresses off
Turn off aggressive roaming
A laptop that sees two access points — a mesh node and the main router — can bounce between them repeatedly.
Device Manager → adapter → Properties → Advanced tab. Look for Roaming Aggressiveness or Roaming Sensitivity and set it to Lowest or Medium-Low. Not all adapters expose it.
If every device drops
Check whether the router is hot
Put your hand on it. Routers run warm normally; a router that is genuinely hot to touch is throttling or resetting, and this is common in units more than a few years old.
Move it out of a cupboard, off carpet, out from under other equipment, and make sure its vents are clear. If drops stop, that was the answer.
Update the router’s firmware
Log into the admin page — usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1, with the
address and default password on a label on the device — and look for a firmware
or system update section.
Intermittent disconnection is one of the most commonly fixed router bugs, and many routers do not update themselves.
Look at DHCP leases
If drops happen once or twice a day at roughly regular intervals, lease renewal is a strong candidate. In the router’s LAN or DHCP settings:
- Increase the lease time to 24 hours or more.
- Check the pool size. A router handing out
192.168.1.100to192.168.1.150supports 51 devices. Modern homes with smart bulbs, plugs, speakers and cameras reach that faster than people expect. - Look at the connected device count. Some older routers have hard limits well below what is now normal.
Change the channel
If the drops correlate with evenings or with neighbours being home, congestion is causing it. A Wi-Fi analyser app shows which channels are busy.
On 2.4GHz use only channel 1, 6 or 11 — the only three that do not overlap — and pick the least crowded. On 5GHz, also check whether you are on a DFS channel (52–144): these are shared with weather radar, and the router is legally required to vacate immediately if it detects radar, which disconnects every device with no warning. If you are near an airport or a coast, choose a non-DFS channel.
Split the bands
Band steering — one network name covering 2.4GHz and 5GHz — is convenient and occasionally causes devices to bounce between bands, dropping the connection each time.
Give the bands separate names in the router’s settings and connect devices manually. The detail on which band to choose is in why Wi-Fi is slow with a strong signal.
Check the physical line
If the router’s internet light flickers during drops, the fault is upstream of your Wi-Fi entirely. Reseat the coaxial or DSL cable at the wall and at the modem, check for damaged cable, and look at the router’s log for repeated WAN disconnections.
A log showing the line dropping several times a day is evidence worth giving your provider — it moves the conversation past “have you restarted it”.
The interference cases worth knowing
- Microwave ovens emit directly in the 2.4GHz band. If drops coincide with cooking, move devices to 5GHz.
- Bluetooth shares the same 2.4GHz band. Many devices connected at once can measurably degrade Wi-Fi — see why Bluetooth headphones keep disconnecting for the other side of that coin.
- USB 3.0 devices emit interference around 2.4GHz. An external drive plugged in beside a USB Wi-Fi adapter is a known and surprisingly common problem — move one of them or use an extension cable.
- Neighbouring networks on the same channel are the everyday case, and the reason to check your channel at all.
What does not help
- Resetting the router to factory defaults as a first step. It wipes your configuration and rarely addresses an intermittent fault.
- Buying an extender to fix drops. If the cause is interference or firmware, an extender adds another device to the same congested band.
- “Network optimiser” apps. They cannot influence radio conditions or router firmware.
- Disabling IPv6. Occasionally suggested, almost never the cause, and it breaks things that rely on it.
Realistic expectations
On a Windows laptop, the power management setting alone resolves a large share of single-device cases, and it takes two minutes. Across all devices, router firmware and heat are the two that pay off most often.
If drops continue after all of this and your router is more than four or five years old, replacement is a reasonable conclusion — intermittent radio faults in ageing hardware are not economically repairable.
If the connection also reports “connected” while nothing loads, that is a distinguishable problem: Wi-Fi connected but no internet covers it.