New Lenovo Laptop Knocking out Router

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winston9t4

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
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I'm having a strange issue that appears to be caused by my wife's new Haswell Lenovo Carbon X1. My router is a D-Link DIR-850L. We noticed that we would get frequent drops, requiring either a re-boot of either the router or cable modem, and then we'd be back online.

This only seems to happen when the Lenovo Carbon is on the network. She found that she would check e-mail, and then move to a browser, and then the connection would drop. We discovered that when she was away on a business trip, we had 0 drops of the internet/wifi connection.

Any ideas why the laptop could be causing this issue? Which is most likely the problem component, and any suggested fixes would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Thanks for the suggestion, but why would any firmware version cause this issue? Could it be a setting or something else that I could tweak?

Laptop and router are pretty up to date. Laptop is brand new, and router is just 1 update out of date, but the new firmware patch didn't say anything about addressing this type of issue.
 
Have you checked the IP addresses of the machines when you start experiencing drops? It almost sounds like you may have competing DHCP servers. That wouldn't break anything on the router or modem, but restarting them might force it to revoke/resend leases, fixing the problem temporarily.
 
Haven't checked the IP addresses. What should I be looking for?

My wife is currently out of town with her laptop, and as expected, no drops! I feel like it must be something wrong with her Lenovo Carbon X1, even though it is brand new...
 
winston9t4 said:
Haven't checked the IP addresses. What should I be looking for?
Click to expand...

An IP that is in a different subnet from the one you normally have (example: 192.168.100.x instead of 192.168.1.x), or an APIPA address 169.254.x.x.
 
Manually assign the laptop an IP address that is outside the DHCP range, but on the same subnet. See if that helps. Sounds like multiple machines are competing for the same IP somehow, which can screw things up.
 
Biznatch said:
Manually assign the laptop an IP address that is outside the DHCP range, but on the same subnet. See if that helps. Sounds like multiple machines are competing for the same IP somehow, which can screw things up.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. Would this be a fundamental problem with the laptop, or just one of those things that happen and needs a work-around?

It is a laptop, so ideally I'd like to do a static IP at home, but dynamic everywhere else. Is that doable?
 
winston9t4 said:
Thanks for the tip. Would this be a fundamental problem with the laptop, or just one of those things that happen and needs a work-around?

It is a laptop, so ideally I'd like to do a static IP at home, but dynamic everywhere else. Is that doable?
Click to expand...

No, this would just be to test if that is the issues. If that is, you can set the router to assign a static IP for that device instead of pulling one from the DHCP pool.
 
If the router firmware update doesn't fix it install Wireshark on her laptop and see what traffic it's sending out when it takes out the router or upload the capture so we can take a look at it. It could be her laptop is infected and using up the connection table in the background preventing any new connections with foreground apps like email, browser, etc. If that's the case it's time to start with download of Malwarebytes, boot into safe mode with network (to update signature), scan and clean.
 
mi7chy said:
.... It could be her laptop is infected and using up the connection table in the background preventing any new connections with foreground apps like email, browser, etc. If that's the case it's time to start with download of Malwarebytes, boot into safe mode with network (to update signature), scan and clean.
Click to expand...

that would be my guess too, and also my recommend course of action.
 
OK, here's what ipconfig looks like immediately after the network connection is knocked out. Any tips appreciated!

Windows IP Configuration


Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 3:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Ethernet adapter Bluetooth Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : hsd1.wa.comcast.net.
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::b9d8:3e61:35b0:6faf%4
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.103
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:9d38:90d7:1cff:112:bc55:9414
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1cff:112:bc55:9414%10
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::

Tunnel adapter isatap.hsd1.wa.comcast.net.:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : hsd1.wa.comcast.net.
 
After rebooting the router, here's what it shows (both on the same laptop which seems to be causing the problem).

C:\>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 3:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Ethernet adapter Bluetooth Network Connection:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : hsd1.wa.comcast.net.
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::b9d8:3e61:35b0:6faf%4
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.103
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:9d38:90d7:1cff:112:bc55:9414
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1cff:112:bc55:9414%10
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::

Tunnel adapter isatap.hsd1.wa.comcast.net.:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : hsd1.wa.comcast.net.
 
Hmm, the above look identical to me, aside from spacing which was artificially induced by me as the spacing was all messed up when I pasted it in.
 
try putting the laptop in airplane mode, then disable airplane mode.
That might be enough to bring it back online. This happens all the time on my wifes asus laptop with win8.1
 
upnp issue with the router firmware.
Recent windows 7/8 update makes it worse on formerly working devices/firmware.
 
unwantedSN said:
try putting the laptop in airplane mode, then disable airplane mode.
That might be enough to bring it back online. This happens all the time on my wifes asus laptop with win8.1
Click to expand...

Yeah, unfortunately the entire network goes down - all wired and wireless devices, so it's not just the laptop at that point.

Updated the driver on the Intel wireless 7260AC card, and that didn't help. Spoke with Lenovo tech support, and they thought we need to "downgrade" the wireless card. That may be the only option. Unfortunately the card is hardwired in, so we'd need to send it back to make the change.
 
winston9t4 said:
Yeah, unfortunately the entire network goes down - all wired and wireless devices, so it's not just the laptop at that point.

Updated the driver on the Intel wireless 7260AC card, and that didn't help. Spoke with Lenovo tech support, and they thought we need to "downgrade" the wireless card. That may be the only option. Unfortunately the card is hardwired in, so we'd need to send it back to make the change.
Click to expand...

Go look up the Service Manual for your specific laptop model. Changing a wifi card is typically fairly easy, and it will show you all of the steps to complete so you can decide before sending it in.


Did you try assigning a static IP to the laptop to remove DHCP from the picture and see if the issue still exists?
 
Have you seen this behaviour on a different AP? If not I'd see this as an opportunity to remove a dlink from my life. That's an opportunity that should never be missed.
 
Intel 7260AC isn't a "bad" card, it's not the best but it should certainly work just fine.
Like we said earlier, update the router firmware first.
//Danne
 
This particular laptop (latest Haswell Lenovo Carbon X1) is something like a MacBook Air, where things are not user-replaceable.

My Linksys E3000 running Tomato USB also exhibited similar behavior, but I thought it was just old so I got the D-Link. I could still return it, but all indications seem to point to the laptop as the culprit.

The Lenovo tech also suggested that since the wireless card was "AC", I should turn off everything on the wireless except the AC signal, and then everything would be fine. I told him that didn't make any sense. :)

I also did try to update the firmware, but it would not take. Not sure why it wouldn't upload using their tool, so may have to speak with tech support.

I have not tried the static IP. I will have to do some research to figure out how to do that. That seems to be the next likely attempt to troubleshoot. Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
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