Wi-Fi Keeps Disconnecting on Windows 11

The Wi-Fi icon shows full bars. Then the call freezes, the page hangs, and a few seconds later it's all fine again. Windows has nothing to say about it. It happened, it's over, and you still don't know whether it's the laptop, the router, where you're sitting, or your ISP.

What's actually dropping you

"Wi-Fi keeps disconnecting" covers four different things, and they need four different fixes.

Sometimes the Wi-Fi really does drop: the laptop loses the router for a few seconds and reconnects. Sometimes the Wi-Fi stays connected but the signal is too weak where you are, so the link crawls and stalls without ever showing as disconnected. Sometimes the Wi-Fi and the signal are fine and it's the router itself that stops answering for a moment. And sometimes none of your gear is involved: the Wi-Fi is up, the router is up, and your ISP's line dropped.

From the sofa these all look the same. Everything stops, then everything comes back.

Why checking it yourself is a pain

The Wi-Fi icon only tells you signal strength, and it can show full bars while the link is running at a fraction of its speed. The Windows troubleshooter resets the adapter and says it fixed something. Neither tells you what happened at 21:14 when the call froze, because the drop was over before you could look. To catch it you'd need a ping to the router and a ping to the internet both running in a window all evening, and you'd have to be watching at the moment it went.

How Copper Goose Network Monitor tells them apart

It sits in the Windows tray and checks every few seconds: is this PC's Wi-Fi still connected, how good is the link, is the router answering, and is anything past the router answering. Each drop gets named by what actually failed.

If the Wi-Fi itself goes, the panel says "This PC's Wi-Fi is disconnected". If the signal is too weak where you're sitting, it says "Weak Wi-Fi signal - move closer", and it says that even while Windows is showing full bars, because it judges the link's real speed against what this adapter can do, not the bars. If the link is up but jumping about, it says "Wi-Fi unstable". If the router is the one going quiet, it says "Local network degraded - Wi-Fi or router". And if the Wi-Fi and the router are both fine and the internet still went, it says the fault was past your router.

When the connection comes back, the panel tells you what just happened: "Back online - Down for 40 s. The fault was in your home network." or "The fault was past your router (your ISP)."

Every drop is written down in History, with the date, the time, how long it lasted and what it was: "Wi-Fi disconnected", "weak Wi-Fi signal", "unstable Wi-Fi link", or the router or the line. History also adds it up by month and shows the hours of the day that give the most trouble, so a drop that happens every evening at the same time shows up as a pattern, not a feeling.

What to do with the result

If History keeps saying "weak Wi-Fi signal", the answer is where you sit or where the router sits. Move one of them, or put the router somewhere higher and more central, before you touch any settings.

If History keeps saying "Wi-Fi disconnected" or "unstable Wi-Fi link" from the same spot, with a good signal, it's this PC's Wi-Fi. On a laptop the usual cause is Windows switching the adapter off to save power. In Device Manager, under the Wi-Fi adapter's Power Management tab, untick "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power", then let History tell you whether the drops stopped.

If History keeps saying the router, restart it once. If the drops come back within days, the router is the problem, and no Wi-Fi setting on the PC will fix that.

If History says the fault was past your router, your Wi-Fi was never the problem. Click "Report for ISP..." in History and send your ISP the dates instead.