Windows 8.1: WiFi dropping and/or "Limited"

You can't use this option unfortunately as the venue 8 does not have the power tab available.

As an Update from my last post- this has been fine for a few days until today and after a restart- after which I could not get a connection established on my venue 8

looking at my dns records my default gw and static dns are unavailable - so it seems setting a static dns does not work after all flush dns etc does not resolve either.

Changing my routers 5ghz channel off again has restored a reliable connection to the detriment to all other devices on my network

Wireless networking fails on Windows 8.1 limited connection. This is very bad and unacceptable for MS to upgrade to 8.1 and kill networking for millions of people on all kinds of hardware.

Two brand new HP notebooks, and two apple computers. Upgraded the bios, rebooted, updated the NIC drivers,(as HP phone helpdesk said to do) upgraded the cisco E4200 router firmware. No matter if pc's are set to sleep, reboot or powered off, issue happens. It happens less on the HP notebook, but the wireless setting are the same on the other HP. Issue wasn't as bad on Windows 8 but after 8.1 it is constantly not connecting without many tried of disconnect, reconnect, reenter the password. The router has been reset a couple times and the cable modem has been reset.

Wireless connection fails each time computer is restarted even though it was working fine before a normal shutdown or sleep or reboot. Limited connection, no internet access. Windows 8.1. Norton 360. After playing  around with network trouble shooting and diagnostics it eventually works after 5 frustrating minutes. It is on my home network with the MS IP 169.x.x.x instead of 192.168.x.x. It happens on my wife's new HP laptop too. Happens on sons two Apple notebooks too. iPhones and iPads are fine.

I am having the same issue since the update

Hey, I'm having the same issues as many of you. I just purchased a new dell precision m4800, and it came with windows 7 installed. I put in an SSD and installed windows 8 and upgraded to 8.1 The networking worked ok with Windows 7, and it had the usual windows 7 network issues, can't connect to network, etc. But when it connected, it stayed connected and kept working.

Windows 8.1, on the other hand is a totally different story. This networking connects, then stops working for a while, then starts, then stops. It always stays connected according to the tray icon, but it just stops responding. I run a "ping -t google.com" in a command shell and it says "request timed out" at the time when I lose internet connections. That's expected.

So I started sniffing packets (wireshark) to see what was going on. I'm not a network engineer, and only can take a cursory glance at the packets. What I see is that everything goes fine. Pings are sent out, with a reply right away. Other packets are going out, and responses are coming in. THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, the computer appears to not listen to the incoming packets. Packets go out, but nothing comes back in, until it wants to start listening again. Then there is a burst of packets that were supposed to be received earlier, such as all the ping replies, like 10 of them in a row.

So the packets are being sent out, and being "received" just not processed by windows 8.1 until something happens. It doesn't look like anything in the traffic is affecting this, it is just random. So something in the system is holding up the processing of incoming packets

This is bothering me to no end. I can't get work done unless I hookup to the wired ethernet, which works all the time.

So, no, it isn't static dns, it isn't static ip, it isnt power saving disable, it isn't turning off ip6, or anything else. I've tried them all. Plus my machine doesn't have an intel adapter. it's a dell 1601 a/g/n/ac (atheros).

Let's work together to figure this one out, as microsoft doesn't seem to have the answer.

I don't think analyzing the packets will help, but I have it saved if anyone cares to look.

Steve-hong,

Nice debugging.

For me, the following workaround has allowed my Wi-Fi to stay up in Windows 8.1, but with my network speed lowered to 54Mbps:

1. Rolling back my Intel 6235 Advanced-N Wireless driver to Microsoft's June 2013 version, and
2. Turning off 802.11n and restricting my Wi-Fi to 802.11b/g

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I also disabled power-saving mode, etc., but I don't think those other changes had an impact.

For Microsoft's sake, I very much hope they debug and resolve this problem.  This is the first Windows release I have seen (I have been using Windows since 3.0, and lightly touched 1.0 and 2.11) that has had this kind of a networking problem.   This is coming at the worst possible time, as users move to tablets, Macs, and even Chromebooks to avoid these problems.