Unstable Wi-Fi connection on gaming laptop

Blayyzi · Jul 5, 2023

Hi there,

My gaming laptop deals with an inconsistent Wi-Fi connection as well as packet loss when playing video games. This poor sense of connection regularly happens between the Wi-Fi both at home and the one at my university. When I was using the ethernet at university, the connection was completely fine. This has led me to believe that my laptop is the issue, not the internet itself.

This started happening ever since I got the laptop, so it isn't something that suddenly appeared. The connection was almost perfect to begin with, but every 30 seconds the connection would suddenly drop for about a full second, before going straight back to normal. Overtime, this has changed slightly, and now it's much more frequent, slightly less harsh, but way more annoying and disrupting to my gameplay.

I have a gaming desktop as well with worse specs, but the internet connection has always worked completely fine on there. My home's Wi-Fi is very modern and deals with very little conjestion, and I'm the only one in the house who has dealt with any connection issues, and has only occurred with this one device.

Right now I'm at home so I've been using the internet here, and the router is too far to use ethernet. Because of this, I'm having to deal with the connection issues, and it makes playing games unbearable. Any suggestions to fix this?

What I've already tried:

Network troubleshooter

Updating network drivers from Device Manager

Tried a packet test online, but it resulted in a 0% packet loss, and no obvious issues

I pinged the website cloudflare.com by putting "ping -n 50" into cmd prompt, also resulting in 0% packet loss, with the following delays:

Here's the debug screen in the game Overwatch which shows packet loss. This doesn't always happen, but this is what it looks like when the connection goes haywire:

This is what a normal debug screen looks like:

:)

SwordofWhedon

All of those ping times are fine

I suggest you contact your laptop manufacturer for troubleshooting your hardware dropping

DominumStige

Hi!

Verify that the console is
correctly connected to the internet. Also if the console is connected to a Wi-Fi connection, try using an ethernet cable: the Wi-Fi signal can be unstable in multiplayer.

Jurgen1488

There may be an error on your network. If you have a console connected to Wi-Fi, here's the answer. Wifi is unstable on the network. Connect the console to the network cable and you will probably have problems.

Courtney Todd

Hi S S, my name is Courtney and I would be happy to help.

I understand, give me more information about your problem, are you playing via Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable? For online games, it is always advisable to play through a cable connection, since the Wi-Fi is usually unstable at times. If you are connected through a Wi-Fi network, I recommend moving the router closer to the console.

I hope this information has been useful to you.

Greetings,
Courtney.

sandy the hippy

Can I ask for a bit of extra info?

Did you run the streaming network test from the Xbox app on your laptop, if so what were the results?

Is your console / laptop using Wi-Fi or wired connections?

If using Wi-Fi,is it 2.4mhz or 5mhz?

Unstable Wi-Fi connection on gaming laptop