WiFi issues and new Xfinity Gateway

DeaconFrost

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 6, 2007
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I recently upgraded my home internet service, which included an Advanced Gateway device from Xfinity. I had been using my own router for about 8 years. I didn't encounter any issues with the switch initially. All devices seemed to work, including several Google Home devices, a Sonos, etc. I have a personal laptop and work laptop, both working fine.

My wife's Dell Inspiron laptop, though...not so much. It's a new build running Windows 10 1909 x64. The WiFi card is an Intel 9560. We've resorted to trying several different revisions of the drivers, some from Dell, and some from Intel directly. Her WiFi will frequently drop or claim to be connected but not pass any traffic through. She often have to refresh a website multiple times to get it to load. I also booted from an Ubuntu Live USB and can mimic the issues. Some of the driver revisions are better than others, but nothing works as well as my laptops, both of which use an older Intel 8xxx series card.

I can find others having similar issues, but nothing I try seems to make a difference. I had a small generic USB wifi adapter from a Raspberry Pi that I plugged into her laptop, disabling the onboard one, and it seemed to work much better. We can go that route, but it still would be nice use what's built-in. One thing she found, however, was that disabling the Microsoft WiFi Direct Virtual Adapter #2 seemed to improve her stability. We've also taken the laptop to other wireless networks, and didn't have any issues. I have zero faith in getting any support from Comcast. I'm not sure what else to check or try for now.
 
Curious about changing some of the variables in the driver/wifi configuration just to see if you can pinpoint a particular part of the driver causing the problem, such as:

  • Disabling 802.11n and seeing if it is stable on 802.11g instead (this may also disable AC so you may be stuck at 54mbps max, but curious if more stable anyway)
  • 2.4ghz vs 5ghz
  • BIOS -> Go to wireless settings and set them all to factory defaults
  • Does it mostly happen after the laptop is asleep? Possible wake/power issues (maybe change power settings?)
 
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