Constant Wireless Dropouts

Hi I work at a school with about 1000 windows 8.1 enterprise laptops with about 4 different models. 

In the last 3 months we have had an issue arise that causes machines to loose connection to the network.  They are unable to ping/file transfer/anything involving direct traffic.   We have tried moving the machines to different wireless networks to make sure its not our wireless causing the issue(it still occurs).  When they are in this failed state they are still showing as connected to the wireless, and checking the controller they are still connected. 

Looking at wireshark traffic while in this failed state shows only multicast and broadcast packets, no direct traffic goes in our out of the machine. 

It seems to be completely random as to when it happens.  Sometimes can take as little as 1 minute after connecting to disconnect from the network.  We have noted that doing a file copy does aggravate the issue.  It is happening on all of our laptop models(that contain different brands). 

The issue does seem to spread.  We have tried installing a straight 8.1 install to see if we can get the issue to occur(which it does not) until placed on a network with other machines that this error is occurring on(this can happen on our network or on other networks). 

We have tried looking for viruses, software causing problems, have had no real consistency other than in the end everything ends up with the same issue. Some models seem to be more prone than others at causing the problem and our updated deployment defiantly happens consistently.

Looking through error logs there is nothing significant standing out at the exact times the problem occurs.

Any thoughts any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

April 1st, 2015 1:15am

if this is not router or network issue, I suggest you update the WLan driver in one PC to test

to isolate 3rd party software conflict, try one PC at safe mode with networking 

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
April 1st, 2015 2:37am

if this is not router or network issue, I suggest you update the WLan driver in one PC to test

to isolate 3rd party software conflict, try one PC at safe mode with networking 

  • Edited by britishdhez Wednesday, April 01, 2015 6:36 AM
April 1st, 2015 6:36am

We have tried 4 different driver versions on 1 model and 2 on another. 

Have also had it happen in safe mode.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
April 1st, 2015 6:00pm

if this is also happen in safe mode with networking, I suspected this is driver or hardware issue

I suggest you contact PC manufactured for investigate this

Most likely this issue can be solved by updating the driver, please make sure you download the correct one, manufactured will help you to find the correct one

Also if you using Hyper-V or any virtualization, try to disable it at BIOS, and perform clean boot in normal mode once again to test

April 1st, 2015 9:17pm

Looking through error logs there is nothing significant standing out at the exact times the problem occurs.

Any thoughts any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

netsh wlan  supposedly has some tracing and troubleshooting  functionality.  Have you looked at it?

More generally there would be this

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2009/08/27/etw-introduction-and-overview.aspx

HTH

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
April 1st, 2015 9:23pm

if this is also happen in safe mode with networking, I suspected this is driver or hardware issue

I suggest you contact PC manufactured for investigate this

Most likely this issue can be solved by updating the driver, please make sure you download the correct one, manufactured will help you to find the correct one

Also if you using Hyper-V or any virtualization, try to disable it at BIOS, and perform clean boot in normal mode once again to test

  • Edited by britishdhez Thursday, April 02, 2015 1:16 AM
April 2nd, 2015 1:16am

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics