Wifi crashes my computer

[Incarnate]

Every couple of months my Lenovo laptop will crash to the blue screen, usually on start up. I've tried updating every possible driver, reinstalling windows, running diagnostics to test each component, blasting the insides with an air compressor to eject dust, turning off "fast start," restoring to a previous point, etc.

It seems to only happen when I connect to the internet via wifi.

Usually it fixes itself without me doing anything. The only solution I've found is to turn on airplane mode to bypass the wifi glitch, and manually plugging the ethernet cord into the back. Then the wifi works fine for weeks or months.

Anybody have any clue what this is about? Is this software-related or a bad physical component?

Thanks.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Could be a faulty wifi card. You can usually replace that part. I've had them go faulty in a couple laptops after 1-2 years sometimes

[emoticorpse]

You bounce to the other band thing? Like 2.4gzh vs 5 ghz to see what happens?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes try different band.
I've seen plenty of laptops where it works on 2.4Ghz but when you try to jump over to a 5Ghz SSID the wifi device crashes and restarts itself. It shouldn't BSOD Win10/11 though. Just a driver triggered device restart. Like your gpu driver can do with your gpu.

[Incarnate]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Yes try different band.
I've seen plenty of laptops where it works on 2.4Ghz but when you try to jump over to a 5Ghz SSID the wifi device crashes and restarts itself. It shouldn't BSOD Win10/11 though. Just a driver triggered device restart. Like your gpu driver can do with your gpu.

I'll try it out. Thanks, guys. I assumed it was something like this since the diagnostic tests always says the device is in fine working order.

The problem is it seems to happen randomly every couple of months, so there is no way to really know until it occurs.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Have it only connect to 2.4Ghz and then when connected Restart Windows and see if it continues. Or if that's some how an issue, connect to 5Ghz and then restart and see.

[Heitor Villa-Lobos]

Switch OS, ditch Windows.

Or use cable/ethernet connection.

*flies away

[[☥] - CJ -]

So obviously i missed some parts of the OP lmao

If you got actual blue screens because of it, id download WhoCrashed to analyze the crash dumps to see what EXACTLY caused the bluescreen.

If you have the option to use ethernet instead of WIFI, cant you just disable the WIFI Adapter itself instead of messing with airplane mode etc to do it?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If you have ability to use ethernet cable, disable the wifi then cause using hard line cable is much better overall anyways.

You can disable the WiFi in Device Manager or turn it off entirely within the BIOS.