These are my WiFi's physical hardware properties as shown by Windows 10

SSID:   siddhantrimal

Protocol:   802.11n

Security type:  WPA2-Personal

Network band:   2.4 GHz

Network channel:    7

IPv4 address:   192.168.10.2

Manufacturer:   Intel Corporation

Description:    Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260

Driver version: 19.40.0.3

Physical address (MAC): ‎FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF

As you can see, I'm using Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 with driver update 19.40.0.3 . I don't know when this problem started because I'm mostly on wired connection but its has been a few weeks since I noticed this problem.

The problem is that my WiFi connection abruptly disconnects from the Internet on my Laptop, while other devices on the same WiFi run quite fine. It does not disconnect from the WiFi, the WiFi icon in the tray just shows an exclamation mark indicating that the internet connection is lost while WiFi is connected. At this state I cannot even access my Router from my device.

My interim solution so far has been deleting the WiFi profile from Settings> WiFi> Manage Known Networks and re-entering the password after clicking Settings> WiFi> Show Available Networks and then everything works fine but its a hit or miss most of the time.

I am using:

Device: Lenovo X260

OS: Windows 10 Professional Signature Edition

Has anyone faced this particular problem? Is it a driver issue? I'm lost. Any speculations on where the problem lies? Can anyone resolve this situation?

this is me from the future. I have realized that this is a native problem with Microsoft, Intel and Lenovo, and neither of the three are going to fix this. A possible solution is using Linux, but since this is superuser, here's a solution on Windows 10:

Before you begin on the fix, you have to realize what's causing the problem. It is the Wi-Fi adaptor failing to work properly with the device and OS. To fix this, the manual approach is disabling and then re-enabling the Wi-Fi adaptor. We're going to streamline that process.

1. Make a batch file with the following lines of script:

@echo off

set ssid="siddhantrimal"

echo The following interfaces are preset

netsh interface show interface

echo Resetting the Wi-Fi interface...

netsh wlan disconnect

netsh interface set interface Wi-Fi disable

echo Command completed. Status:

netsh interface show interface

echo Enabling interface again...

netsh interface set interface Wi-Fi enable

echo Successful reset

ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 > nul

netsh wlan connect name=%ssid%

REM: The above script runs only in elevated mode (admin mode) which is a non-issue for what we're about to do.

Alternatives:

Here's where you part ways and choose what works best for you:

Route-A

1. Streamline the process with a powershell alias

• Open powershell
  


• Type sal wifires D:Scriptswifi-reset.bat (assuming that's where you saved the file)


• Now type wifires within powershell to execute the reset easily.

2. Save aliases across all powershell cmdlets

By default, even if you use Set-Alias or sal, the alias will only exist for a single cmdlet where you define it. You can change that behavior by exporting a list of aliases to a file(a ps1 file). Then if your computer cannot run ps1 scripts by default, you need to change that

Route-B

Attach a hotkey to a shortcut that targets the batch file

You can still follow Step-1, but modify it a bit to execute on elevated access.
You can see an unrelated use-case of that method over here. When your batch file can do this, you can simply create a shortcut and target a hotkey to that shortcut in order of you to execute that file.

Personally, Route-A worked best for me because the CLI is just Win+X+A away and you get this result:

You'll probably need to jump a few hoops like shown in A.1. and A.2. to do this

or, you simply need to allow local ps1 scripts to run on your computer and create a $profile to reload your aliases (This is Route C, btw, a little less secure than Route-A, but very straightforward.)

i never could get the intel dual band wireless-ac 8260 chipset to work reliably in several new (VERY expensive) Panasonic CF-54 laptops. my experience has lead me to believe the problem is the massive Proset bloatware, not the barebones drivers or the chipset.

This is my fix for W7, but the steps are the same for W8/10:

I spent days (weeks really) trying everything I could think of and many suggestions from intel and the internet as well. nothing worked. the chipset was balky in connecting if it would connect at all, and when it did connect, it was almost always REALLY, REALLY, REALLY slow and frequently disconnected! And this was the case with multiple different routers, both old and new.

In complete despair, I finally decided to completely nuke the MASSIVE (and as far as I could tell, nearly useless) bloatware known as Intel Proset/Wireless and instead just install the basic Intel WiFi drivers and let Microsoft manage the WiFi (which Microsoft has almost always done flawlessly since Vista SP1) and see if that might fix the problem. It did fix the problem!

Here's what to do:

1. Download the barebones Intel drivers specific to your OS version for the 8260 wifi chipset from here:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27206

For my Windows 7 x64 system, I downloaded WiFi_20.0.2_Driver64_Win7.zip:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/downloads/eula/27206/Intel-PROSet-Wireless-Software-and-Drivers-for-IT-Admins?httpDown=https%3A%2F%2Fdownloadmirror.intel.com%2F27206%2Fa08%2FWiFi_20.0.2_Driver64_Win7.zip

2. Unzip the downloaded driver file into its own folder, but don't do anything else with it yet.




3. Go to Programs and Features in Control Panel and Uninstall the installed Intel Proset/Wirless software. Remove everything, including "settings".




4. Next, manually delete the two intel wifi driver files from Windows/system32/drivers, namely netwfw02.sys and netwfw02.dat OR netwfw04.sys and netwfw04.dat (or perhaps both or even some other number besides 02 or 04). This is an important step, because uninstalling intel driver software lately does not always actually delete the old driver files, and I've had replacement intel driver installs silently fail because they were unable to delete and/or replace existing driver files, leaving a total mess.

(The worse case i've encountered is that after uninstalling the intel HD Graphics 520 display drivers, over 200 driver files are left behind that HAVE to be manually deleted AFTER uninstalling, because if they are not manually deleted, the new driver bundle will absolutely NOT install correctly leaving things like graphics acceleration completely broken.)

5. Now go back to the unzipped barebones wifi drivers folder and execute DPInst64.exe (DPInst32.exe for 32-bit systems) followed by executing iprodifx.exe.

And that should be it. Windows should popup a balloon from the taskbar telling you that a new wifi device has been installed and you should be good to go. Not only should the intel wifi now function flawlessly, but you've also eliminated a massive amount of unnecessary bloatware, including several background processes that run at all times, consuming both CPU and memory.

btw, if auto update reinstalls Proset, any problems are likely to come back ...

also, note that i've posted this information multiple times on intel boards and they keep deleting my posts - intel absolutely refuses to acknowledge that their Proset bloatware for the 8260 is utter garbage and is wrecking havoc with users stuck with the 8260.