How not to lose Wifi after waking up from standby or sleep mode?

After 30 minutes my Windows 7 PC goes to Standby. Problem is, when I get it back to normal, Wi-Fi is disconnected. And it doesn't just reconnect and come back in 10 seconds. For example, when I start it up, I have to click on the Wi-Fi symbol, select the Wi-Fi and connect to it. This takes much longer and made me think about disabling standby altogether - not the best solution.

Some information:

The PC is a standard desktop machine, no laptop.
There is no additional power management software installed.
The Wireless Network Adapter (Atheros AR5005G) is set to not being able to be deactivated to save energy in Device Manager.
The Wireless Network Adapter uses no special software from Atheros, only the driver that was installed by Windows itself
Control panel > Power options > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Wireless adapter settings > Power saving mode = Maximum Performance

Any idea what could cause this behaviour? How can I stop it from losing Wi-Fi or reconnect normally?

janpio

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 975

Sounds like your power mangement software is turning the device off. – Ramhound – 2013-09-30T12:51:42.923

There is no power management software installed (that I know of. Couldn't find any looking through Programs). This is a desktop PC, so also no special BIOS stuff going on, I think. – janpio – 2013-09-30T12:56:10.713

2Clarify your question with that informat. Windows comes with power management tools so I would double check device properties. Update your question with all information learned by doing this. – Ramhound – 2013-09-30T12:58:17.740

Any way to export this configuration stuff in a sane way? Additionally I'm on German Win7, the translation of the normal options are horrible so I'm having problems connecting the English names to the German ones... (e.g. "Deaktivieren" = "Standby" sometimes) – janpio – 2013-09-30T13:00:06.927

Export what configuration? This a new problem or a problem that has always existed? – Ramhound – 2013-09-30T13:06:37.693

All the settings of the power profile in the power options of windows. I thought you were referring to this to be added to the question. Right?

The problem is not new, but I ignored it until now. Don't really know when it started or if it was always there. – janpio – 2013-09-30T13:08:47.773

2I suggested you just confirm what the device does when the computer goes to sleep which can be found on the properties of the device itself in Device Manager. I suggested you clarify your computer isn't a laptop in the question itself. – Ramhound – 2013-09-30T13:12:53.413

Thanks, did that. Also added, that the computer may not deactive the Wireless Network Adapter to save energy. – janpio – 2013-09-30T13:19:30.023

Did you install software supplied by Atheros or are you allowing Windows to manage your wireless connection? – Ramhound – 2013-09-30T13:20:54.273

No special software from Atheros, only drivers that were automatically installed by Windows itself. – janpio – 2013-09-30T13:27:55.290

Could you run eventvwr.exe to see if you have errors during the time of waking from sleep? If so, which errors. – Rik – 2013-09-30T13:44:13.137

No errors, but a warning: "TIMEOUT<svchost.exe> C:\Windows\System32\netprofm.dll". Could this be related? – janpio – 2013-09-30T14:24:36.757

It could be. If this is at (or on) the time after the wakeup. "netprofm.dll" is for the "Network List Service". I was expecting an error of some sorts that the wifi-adapter could not establish a connection. Do you have any virusscanners or third party firewall software? These can kick in after the WiFi-adapter and therefore blocking network traffic before they start. (Try disabling them temporarily) – Rik – 2013-09-30T14:46:07.210

Also check Control panel>Power options>Change plan settings>Change advanced power settings>Wireless adaptor settings>Power saving mode. This is a different setting than in Device Manager – Rik – 2013-09-30T15:12:23.213

That's set to "Maximum Performance". Seems to be the most reasonable setting. And I'll try disabling Avira AntiVir, but I can't image that this is the culprit. – janpio – 2013-09-30T16:16:26.857

Answers

I cannot believe this, but after months of trying to fix this, it turns out that, for me, checking ON (enabled) the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” worked.

Got this idea from Intel’s My WiFi Technology stops working after resuming from sleep or hibernate in Windows 7. My guess is that the driver expects to turn the network card back on after sleep or on a cold boot, and because the option is turned off, it toggles the "switch" from being already on to off. Maybe?

Anyway it works for me now, perfectly.

DCpianoman

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 166

1Actually turning it 'off' worked for me on windows 10 Samsung laptop, but +1 anyway. – Piotr Falkowski – 2015-12-27T20:03:51.497

This worked for me as well! My Intel Wireless card started disconnecting and failing to reconnect after sleep. One of the first things I tried was to uncheck the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option. This didn't work. So the next thing I did was update the driver. This also didn't work. But the combination of updating the driver and enabling the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option seems to have fixed it for me! – Brian Rothstein – 2017-01-18T21:52:09.030

Wifi network disappears after sleep mode Actually turning it 'off' worked for me on windows 8.1 Lenovo laptop, but +1 anyway. My WiFi Technology stops working after resuming from sleep or hibernate in Windows. hide wireless network suddenly after sleep or hibernate – saber tabatabaee yazdi – 2018-06-26T20:40:16.940

2Seems completely backwards, but worked for me too. – Paul – 2014-04-13T01:17:55.860

Apparently, disabling a Windows power saving option causes a family of Intel drivers to malfunction. I was able to solve this issue on two Intel network card-equipped Lenovo ThinkPads. So if your computer also relies on an Intel WiFi network card, I'd suggest you :

Go to the Windows Control Panel
Click on System
Select the Device Manager
Right-click on your Intel wireless device and choose Properties
In the tab Power Management, enable the option Allow the computer to turn off the device to save power.

This solved my problem. As I am not using an English version of Windows, let me know if you can't find those menus.

Gab

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 105

For me on an HP EliteBook Folio 9480m (Windows 7 x64 SP1 with an Intel Wifi chip), the solution was to switch "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" OFF, and then back ON. Unbelievable!

Sam Adelman

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 31

After much aggravation, and trying all the power management options, I discovered that windows was using more than one utility to manage the wireless adapter. After exiting the trendnet utility and disabling it from starting up in the system configuration utility, I restarted the computer to find the problem solved.

The clue that led me to this was having more than one wireless icon in the system tray. The one in green happened to be trendnet.

Richard Legge

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 21

Lenovo Thinkpad T540p user running Win7 x64 here - had a problem very similar to the one described in this answer. I ended up delving into Power Options (advanced settings) and setting the "Wireless Network Card" (or whatever it was called) to maximum performance on both battery & plugged in (and, like many others in this thread, re-enabled the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox that you get to via Device Manager > Network Cards > yadda-yadda-yadda). – Pockets – 2016-05-11T05:21:10.497

The accepted answer (enabling - or disabling - "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power") did not work for me on my new ASUSPRO D641MD when it would wake up from sleep mode.

In my case, I had to Uninstall device for the wifi adapter in the Device manager. When I rebooted, it was re-installed and has been working properly since.

Fuhrmanator

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 2 712

For those, like myself, whose issue persisted after trying the apparently popular solution enabling/disabling the Power Management option, consider this:

Do you happen to have LogMeIn Hamachi on your PC? The quickest fix I came upon so far was to disable it "Network Connections" once you get the internet issue. Internet connectivity automatically fixes itself, and Hamachi network will will re-enable itself automatically as well.

This works for me; otherwise I used to disable & re-enable my Wireless Network... which fixes the issue only temporarily.

There's likely a more permanent fix to avoid this problem altogether, but I don't have the smarts or time to figure it out.

Immanuel Nwachukwu

Posted 2013-09-30T12:30:19.387

Reputation: 1