One laptop is killing our wireless

When a specific laptop is turned on all other wireless devices lose their connection but when that laptop is connected to the router with an ethernet cable the connections are all stable. Typically when that laptop is connected via wireless we (3 other laptops and 3 iphones, occasionally more devices) all have connections dropped every minute or more.

I have tried updating the drivers on that laptop but they are already up to date, I've tried so many things that have been suggested but nothing seems to be working other than keeping it plugged into the router constantly which is not an option for us.

The laptop also shows 100% disk usage directly on start-up when nothing else is running. Sometimes stopping Superfetch and Windows Search will help but not for long and sometimes not at all, not sure if this is related to the problem but I figured I'd throw that in here as well. It's a Windows 8 Lenovo y580 laptop, only a couple years old. I have the exact same laptop for myself with Windows 7 and it's a year older with no problems.

I'm hoping someone has an idea of what to do here because everything is pretty much garbage once that laptop is connected to wireless.

Jesse

Posted 2014-12-23T18:26:28.177

Reputation: 31

1Test this: Buy a cheap USB wifi dongle,keep the laptops native wifi off and just use the dongle. – cybernard – 2014-12-23T18:29:51.790

1First thought - check for botnet activity – Tetsujin – 2014-12-23T19:19:17.277

Yeah, sounds like a virus to me. – imtheman – 2014-12-23T19:37:42.230

@cybernard The dongle works! We all have no problems with wifi while the laptop is connected to it. Any idea what the problem is with the laptop then? The dongle is kind of bulky so I don't want to keep it connected forever and I'd rather just get the entire laptop fixed. Is it just a faulty network card? – Jesse – 2014-12-24T01:30:42.643

Avast also picked up two "viruses" but I'm pretty sure those were just torrented games key bypasses or something not actual viruses, but they were fixed either way. – Jesse – 2014-12-24T01:32:51.013

@Jesse Yes, the laptop is using an old frequency spectrum overlapped by your newer devices. Called a,b,g,n and etc. You may or may not be able to reconfigure your laptop to operate on a newer wifi spectrum. You will have to identify the exact wifi card built-in to your laptop to know if you can change it. You can also try checking the software advanced settings. Ideally you want g or n. – cybernard – 2014-12-24T01:58:43.333

@cybernard That would make sense, except for my personal laptop has the same network card as the one that isn't working. They are both Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2220. Is this still the problem? If so, how would I go about fixing it? Would installing a new network card help because I am honestly hating this thing haha – Jesse – 2014-12-24T02:10:01.213

If they are exactly the same then you should be able to reconfigure it for g or n or whatever works. – cybernard – 2014-12-24T02:31:09.200

Answers

It's possible that the device is flooding the network with wireless signals. I once enabled sound broadcasting in my home network over wifi and that made wifi network almost unusable. This problem didn't exits over ethernet because of the higher bandwidth.

Use a packet capture software like wireshark to see if this is the case. Actually on windows you can open the task manager and look at the network graph. It could quickly show you if lots of data is transferred. Then you can use a capture software to see what exactly is that data.

The suggestions to try a wifi dongle if the above doesn't resolve the issue is also good.

akostadinov

Posted 2014-12-23T18:26:28.177

Reputation: 1 140

Does the laptop hijack the ip address of yourbase station? – bbaassssiiee – 2014-12-27T08:50:20.557

@datasmid, that's a good point to check - that IP configuration is not forcing IP address that's interfering with router, DNS server or something. – akostadinov – 2014-12-28T09:59:29.660

-1

I suffered for years with this issue. Googling many times. At long last I found a solution that took less than 5 minutes to implement.

Problem statement:

Home WIFI works great with Dell Laptop, iPads, Phone, TV and Satellite box. When using my work provided Lenovo Laptop after a period of 5 to 30 minutes the home WIFI is reduced to a trickle (for example: 0.2Mbps up and 0.07 down) or a complete halt. This laptop works fine on office and coffee shop WIFI. So, is it the router, the laptop or how they work together that is the issue? When I used my smartphone mobile hotspot I do not have that issue. Removing the Lenovo from the WIFI network solves the connection problem for all other devices within a minute or two. After retiring I purchased a new Lenovo lap top and that has the same issue. So, is it a Lenovo problem? Well the Dell had an update and it started doing the same thing. The work laptop was Win7. The Dell and new Lenovo are Win10.

Drilling into the issue:

ISP tech support had a few suggestions that did not work. Lenovo support forums provided nothing of help except “make sure the drivers are up to date”. Most Google searches suggested 2 solutions both of which failed: updating laptop drivers and changing the WIFI Channel used on the router.

The solution that worked:

Eventually Google searches came up with a solution that worked for me. It is the WIFI “mode”. The router supports 802.11b/g/n – the Laptops 802.11a/b/g. So I simply set the router and laptops to the overlapping modes only: 802.11 b/g.

Nick Turner

Posted 2014-12-23T18:26:28.177

Reputation: 1