Windows 8.1: WiFi dropping and/or "Limited"

If you can get it on the internet with a Ethernet DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth will work well. If not add /limitaccess to the end of that and use SFC/scannow.

Log out of your account and restart.

Can you explain how to do this in a little more detail. It is only some hotspots I cannot connect to. I can connect using my phone as a hotspot.

Thanks

I've tried all this plus numerous other things and still no joy

The issue isn't with Windows 8.1 because it doesn't handle that. The DHCP to get an IP is between the wireless driver and the router. I would go through this http://www.vindamedia.com/windows/help/troubleshooting-your-network

If you can get it on the internet with a Ethernet DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth will work well. If not add /limitaccess to the end of that and use SFC/scannow.

Log out of your account and restart.

Autotuninglevel

It improves the performance for programs that get TCP data over the network. If you set it to disabled it sets the receive windows to a fixed amount which prevents it from the being able to dynamically raise and lower the window for the data to come through in each TCP. The default should be set to normal. That makes it so the windows can grow and shrink according to the network traffic.

Here is a summary:

"The Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature lets the operating system continually monitor routing conditions such as bandwidth, network delay, and application delay. Therefore, the operating system can configure connections by scaling the TCP receive window to maximize the network performance. To determine the optimal receive window size, the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature measures the products that delay bandwidth and the application retrieve rates. Then, the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature adapts the receive window size of the ongoing transmission to take advantage of any unused bandwidth."

Heuristics

I believe the only reason to disable that is if you are going to make custom settings and you don't want those to get overridden. I am not 100% sure on that but as far as I know that will just stop it from doing any analyzing of the network condition.

You could try and set *netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=*normal and see if it still works. If not the better option would be restricted.

RSS

Rss is enabled as the default setting. If it was changed I would be curious what changed it. Perhaps some malware or anti virus software. If you are using a third part virus protection or firewall that could be the issue.

Here is an old article that goes in to a little more detail. As you can see these things have been around for almost 10 years. If changing those settings fixes it, those not working is most likely a symptom of a larger issue and not the cause.

At the bottom of the link I sent you there is a link to how to boot in to safe mode with networking and clean boot. Safe mode will show if there is a hardware or software issues. If the NIC doesn't work in safe mode it is a hardware issue. If it works in safe mode but not clean boot it is a software conflict with a third party software. (I would bet if is a third party firewall that is causing the issue. Maybe some prebuilt one from Norton of MacAfee.

If you formatted the PC and reloaded Windows with the recovery drive, then it could be some software that is preloaded from the PC vendor such as their bloatware. I would remove all of their stuff and any virus software then enable Windows Defender. Let me know if you try that and if it works.

I have just had a computer engineer at my hotel to try and fix the problem of only being able to get limited access and not getting an IP address. The problem is with windows 8.1. When are we going to get a fix