Acer V7 wifi issues

Hey there,

I need your help guys. I've had V7 582P for almost a year now and it was always reliable and working without any issues. Wifi, specifically, was always great, strong solid signal even outside the house. Just couple days ago this for some reason changed. Now wifi is unstable, disconnecting all the time and strength of the signal sucks. Any ideas what I can try and do? What could it be? Why it's happening?

PS: One thing I tried was setting battery savings to 'disable' so it shouldn't mess with wifi.

 

Assuming you haven't updated drivers recently or haven't made any changes to network settings - which I presume you would have mentioned - have you considered that the problem might be elsewhere?

Reboot your router for starters. Also use insider (v3 is still free if I remember correctly) to see what channels are occupied and if your should change the channel your network is broadcasting on.

Additional info needed: your Wi-Fi router, Wi-Fi card and its driver version, id the network 2.4GHz or 5GHz.

 

Hi, thanks for your reply. I haven't updated or changed anything, but Windows did some updates, that's only thing I can think of right now. Otherwise I don't think routers are at fault, because I had a chance to test it at two different locations - two apartments and it was acting up at both places and I didn't have issues before so..... Ofc, I tried to restart routers and I tried to restart routers and laptop. V3? Never heard of it, but I can try to look for it.
Wifi is Intel Dual Band Wireless -N 7260 and version of the driver 16.6.0.8. I dont know where to find network id??

 

Auto-correct must have intervened - I meant inSSIDer v3. That's an app.
As for the 7260 - update the drivers. The card had terrible issues with early drivers - which you have.
Once you do - go to device manager, find the card, right-click choose properties, second tab and disable U-APSD there.

 

Yea, thanks. I tried to install new drivers yesterday before I left to bed and it seems to be working now. We will see if it stays that way. Also I chose to disable saving energy option two days ago, guess it wasn't the issue.

 

Just make sure you disable U-APSD separately. It causes a lot of issues with latency spikes.

 

So I'm back, still having issues even tho it's slightly better. My roomate is IT guy, so he tried to adjust some settings on router and my laptop, but even tho it ran smoothly for like two hours, I still get disconnected for few moments and just two mins ago, it lost connection for awhile and had to restart laptop to get it back. No idea, what could make it act so weird over the night.

I tried to look into wifi card properties as you said but there's nothing that looks like U-APSD setting, not even anything that sounds similar. I could take you screenshot of what I see when I click properties, but saving energy setting is on separate tab there. So there I disabled saving energy, don't know where else I could change the settings.

 

If you don't see U-APSD setting, that means you haven't updated drivers. These are the most recent ones (click Telecharger to download). It's a safe site and file BTW (these drivers are not yet available on Intel's website).

With more recent sets of drivers U-APSD settings is visible.

 

Ah, I see. I downloaded one from Intel web, so if it's not newest one then that's why. I'm downloading now and then let you know how it worked and if I see U-APSD in the properties. Sidenote: I have Czech version of laptop, though most of the names are in english and nothing comes even close to anything like U-APSD.

edit: Installed new driver, finally see UAPSD option and it was disabled by default. After restart, laptop and wifi has full signal now and seems fast and smooth. Though, it seemed the same in the afternoon for awhile, so we will see if it stays that way for few hours. Thank you very much for your help anyway, wouldn't find newest drivers without you.

 

So issue is still not resolved. I've noticed that it mostly loses connection if I physically adjust the screen angle or move laptop a bit which makes me think that maybe some component of wifi card might be damaged somehow?! Idk, doesn't make much sense, but it was alright few days ago.

 

No, that's the antenna cable having been damaged. Actual antenna is on top of the screen (2 of them, ne on each side) and the cable is routed from where the Wi-Fi card is through hinges to the screen bezel.

If you notice a loss of connection when adjusting the screen angel that means antenna cable must have been damaged where is comes through the hinge. That needs replacing.

 

Yea, you might have a point. Though, first thing I'm gonna try is tightening all the screws I think. I mean, I can't afford losing laptop right now because of lot of work at university and if it was some serious damage to the cable I can't imagine it'd be smooth as it is most of the time. Right now if I move it, it doesn't even disconnect completely, but slows down a bit when I run speedtest.net. Anyway, I'll keep you updated.

 

After little testing and inspection I think you're completely right about antenna cable and hinges being somewhat damaged... at least to certain degree. Got issues in the morning with connecting. It's ridiculous that at some point, it ran fast and smooth and little move of the screen and gone completely. Anyway, I can't afford to give the machine away, because right now have crazy amount of work to do, but my roomate is IT guy and told me I can use my android phone to work as wifi router and it works great. I'll probably get some wifi usb though so I'm not relying on the phone and the cable. Notebook is not even one year old so I'll hand it in for repair in June or July when school is over. Thanks for all your help

 

That's what I wanted to suggest. Buy a USB dongle for the time being - it will do the job now and will probably be useful later on many occasions.