Windows 10: Intermittent network drops

I have a nine month old Windows 10 notebook from HP. It has a network problem. I am still under warranty.


Periodically and intermittently, it slows to a crawl. This happens especially immediately after I switch from Ethernet to WiFi, but also happens with Ethernet. Pages will barely load, speed test won't run, or will return very slow speeds.


It's hard to nail down because it is intermittent. Sometimes it happens out of the blue. Changing between WiFi/Ethernet may have something to do with it. Running a speed test might even trigger it. One moment it is fine, the speed test is fine, then the next moment it is not. Then it recovers again moments later.


It can go long periods of time without a problem. WiFi seems to be worse. I can stream entire shows no problem. Work all day. Zoom meetings. No problem. Then I try a speed test or change connections and down it goes not every time though.


Connections are not usually lost fully, but grind to a near halt.


I have done a lot of work and I am pretty sure it is not the router or ISP. In fact I have replicated this on two different ISP's and different routers Centurylink DSL and local wireless radio. It happens on both MS Edge and Firefox.


I have updated drivers, updated bios, and tried a bunch of other stuff. I just spent two hours with HP support on screen chat, and they are down to wanting me to reload the windows OS from scratch.


I really do not want to, not have the time to rebuild my PC, and reload its data, and redo all the setups and purchased APPs, and rebuild my WMP music library, or update all the drivers and mess with iTunes for Windows, and all the other tweaks and fixed I have done over thew last nine months.


Do I have any other options?


Thanks

:)

 

Wireless network drops intermittently, needs reset to reconnect

I noticed a strange (puzzling!) but extremely interesting phenomenon during a video conference call this morning.

1. The network dropped as usual, at some time during the video call.
2. But the video call using Zoom.us, *did not drop!*. That's right - the 1 hour of network down time did not affect the Zoom.us video call at at.
3. But other services, specifically, web browser-based services reported no network. I all my browsers - Chrome, Edge, FF - I could not connect to any websites. Also, I have "pseudo-web apps" running, such as WhatsApp's desktop app (which seems to be a shell around a browser), all of which seemed unable to connect. Google Hangouts could not connect either.
4. Weirdly, another collaboration desktop app that I used - Slack - was able to *partially connect!*. That is, I was able to send and receive messages on Slack while the network was out for the hour, but Slack *still* reported no network connection (weird!).

It leads me to believe (and I could be wrong), that *some* parts of the network seem to go down and not come back up until they wireless connection is reset. Maybe some ports, like 80/8080/465/587/110/... are being shut down?

Any ideas?

 

Wireless network drops intermittently, needs reset to reconnect

From my previous detailed comment (Wireless network drops intermittently, needs reset to reconnect - Page 4 - Windows 10 Forums), you might surmise that the problem isn't with the wifi adapter or router.

Also because this laptop is the only one that is behaving this way. Other Windows 7 and Mac laptops and smartphones connected to the same network are fine.

 

Wireless network drops intermittently, needs reset to reconnect

then through that laptop out the window, thank me later