Windows 8.1: WiFi dropping and/or "Limited"

I am no stupid Microsoft support engineer but i will give you a crazy idea, and I am sure this will be helpful to a **** lot of people on the internet. I had read about it somewhere that this happens because 8.1 is just too intelligent. It shuts off the net when there are no background processes using the net, so that means if you are on FB and you are on one page for too long and there are no chat messages coming in, it will shut it off. Well, to keep your net pre-occupied, you need a software which utilizes the net all the time. For me, that software is "Connectify." This is all that you need to do: 1. Download and install Connectify, preferably the Pro version and I don't need to tell you where you will get that from for free ;) 2. Run Connectify 3. Start the Hotspot 4. The problem might persist if you put your computer to sleep and come back again, but it won't otherwise Let me know if this works for now. I will keep you guys posted about the real update to the problem, but this should work for now. Thanks.

You are no Microsoft Support Engineer is correct. Are you trying to sell some useless software that will hog network resources for no reason? Windows does not turn off the network adapter due to lack of network activity. That would be ridiculous and a waste of event monitoring. It is the driver that is not representing the sleep state correctly which makes it impossible for windows to broadcast a wake up event since there is no reason for it to. The setting was added a while ago to disable the ability for a driver to handle the sleep or a network adapter because Microsoft new that 3rd party drivers were not handling the feature correctly and it would interfere with the usability of the PC. Refer to this article to understand what is happening. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2740020/en-us and note the section that reads:

"The Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power setting controls how the network card is handled when the computer enters sleep and can be used if a driver misrepresents how it handles sleep states.Windows never turns off the network card due to inactivity."

I would suggest that no one use this kind of hacky workaround to fix a network issue and would advice everyone to open a new thread since limited connections and no internet access could be from any number of things and that is not the actual error those to connection status are only an alert saying there is something not right.

Please post to your own thread for more accurate and safer help with networking issues

Good Luck

You have knowledge that you have mugged up bro, sorry to say that. I have tried what you said, and I am a Computer Science graduate myself, you think I haven't tried everything under the Sun to make this work? :)

Also, let me tell you something, Connectify is FREE. Unlike Microsoft products. Its not a hack, go to their website and check what it is. It is a software that enables your computer to connect to several devices at the same time, a function missing from Windows.

I think you didn't do your bit of reading!

And BTW, your workaround did not work for 400+ people in the thread. Read their replies. Try what I said for 30 minutes and you will know what I am talking about!

How does this work if you can't get a connection in the first place? It is a workaround since it is working around an issue and a bad one because if it traps the network device in a constant download or upload. Then when a valid get ready to sleep event is broadcast by OS the network and all drives will return they aren't able to sleep and the PC will refuse to sleep or will enter a limited sleep keeping almost everything awake and utilizing way more power which is expensive for a company that has 1,000s of devices. And will drain the battery of a not plugged in device

Sorry to say but all 400 posts are not issues and not related to erroneous device sleep handling. On top of that I wouldn't suggest using extra software that isn't needed. Most of these issue are related to bad routers that aren't conforming to standards or have a misconfiguration. These issues didn't present prior to an update because the driver wasn't using the newer features on the router or several other reasons.

if you have a degree in computer science and it relates to this subject you would know that the OS doesn't handle the network adapter the manufactures driver should. If no driver is available then the basic one will be used but it isn't meant to be the driver used for normal activities.

Microsoft provides an API to interact with the kernel and the network communication is the responsibility of the driver. Therefore it is unnecessary to insult the Microsoft staff or anyone else here trying to offer free help to people.

BTW I don't have a degree in CS and we are all allowed to have our own opinions. If you disagree with any thing I have wrote feel free to provide fact the support why you would need to use brute force to keep an adapter alive and connected to the network.