Disconnection issues with Intel network card when on corporate wireless (Meraki infrastructure)

[PThom17]

We’ve recently been experiencing an issue in several of our offices (mainly) London, where Lenovo Yoga devices are disconnecting from wi-fi. It’s not something that is predictable, but when it happens, several nearby devices disconnect at the same time.

We can reproduce this at will by forcing a channel hop on a specific Meraki AP. the connected Lenovo devices drop their wi-fi connection, but other devices (such as Microsoft Surface Pro) seem completely unaffected.

I’ve tried a separate USB dual-band wi-fi dongle on a Lenovo Yoga, and the issue goes away. So this seems specific to some form of incompatibility between the Meraki infrastructure and the Intel AC-8265 built in adaptors.

The common error in the Event Logs is: Netwtw06          5002      None    Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 : Has determined that the network adapter is not functioning properly.

We're running the latest driver (20.70.10.2)

Can you help please?

[NChap2]

Hi – did this ever get fixed?!

[Alberto_R_Intel]

PThom17, Thank you very much for clarifying those details.

Yes, perfect, we will continue with our research on this matter, as soon as I get more details I will post them on this thread.

Regards,

Alberto R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

A Contingent Worker at Intel

[CWatt5 · Accepted solution]

Hi

Did this issue ever get resolved?, we have the same issue with our HP Notebooks with Meraki Wireless.

[NChap2]

Not that I’m aware of, still exists. Have you tried anything yet? Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

[CWatt5]

We have had the issue since March, we had HP working on it but all they kept doing was updating the drivers. we ended up buying some USB Dongles to get around the issue. We tested a laptop using a intel 7265NGW wifi card and the issue disappeared on that laptop.

[Alberto_R_Intel]

Hello NChap2 and CWatt5, I just received an update on his matter.

PThom17, the original owner of this thread, reported that the problem was fixed by getting in contact directly with Meraki support, they were able to change some settings on the router to fix the problem.

So, in this case, what we recommend is to get in contact directly with them so they can verify and confirm that your router settings are properly configured and for them to provide further assistance on this topic:

https://meraki.cisco.com/support

Regards,

Alberto R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

A Contingent Worker at Intel

[NChap2]

PThom could you share the fix? Thanks Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

[Alberto_R_Intel]

PThom17, We just wanted to check if it is possible for you to share with the peers in the Intel® communities the solution provided by Meraki about this scenario?. It might be useful for all the peers viewing this thread.

Thank you.

Regards,

Alberto R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

A Contingent Worker at Intel

[Spectre_Wifi]

I had a similar issue, albeit on a home network with a 2018 HP Spectre x360 (Intel Wireless-AC 8625) connecting to a Netgear R7000 router.

I was receiving this error - 0x8007003B: An unexpected network error occurred - when copying large files (14.5GB of various Windows ISO files) from a NAS (1 Gbps to the router) wirelessly to the laptop over a 5GHz WiFi connection. The reported speed in Windows was 866.7 Mbps. The laptop was physically located ~1m from the router.

The network was constantly dropping, and I couldn't see the 5GHz access point name for several seconds (sometimes minutes) before it reappears and reconnects again. *EDIT*: This now seems to happen regardless if I am copying files or not. It can be idling in Windows (no applications open) and the connection will still drop randomly.

I tried:
* Various driver versions (old, new. From HP & Intel). Currently on latest Windows update WHQL version (20.70.16.4)
* Set wireless to maximum performance on battery and plugged in in power management
* Disabled Antivirus
* Disabled Firewall
* Disabled all other network adapters (Ethernet etc)

Running 'netsh wlan show wlanreport' at the command prompt and analysing the report shows many instances of 'Capability change on {0593b196-6f9a-4aaf-895f-e681cc567707} {0x47008000000000 Family: V4 Capability: None ChangeReason: CapabilityReset' followed by 'The network is disconnected by the driver'.

I tested copying the exact same files over the same WiFi 5GHz connection from other laptops I have access to:
* Lenovo L590 (Windows 10, Wireless-AC 9260) - Works every time.
* HP Probook 850 G1 (Windows 7, Wireless-N 7260) - Works every time.

I fired up InSSIDer and discovered there was a hidden network on the 5GHz band on channel 165. Turns out it was being broadcast by the XBox One. It was a WiFi Direct signal for connecting to the wireless controller.

Thinking there was interference from the Xbox, I changed the 5G Network on the Netgear router to use a lower channel (36 instead of 149), keeping the channel width at 80Mhz. This seemed to resolve the problem, despite using a channel adjacent to a neigbours WiFi signal.

Strangely, I did a test with the Xbox completely unplugged, and changed the channel back to 149 (with 80Mhz width) and the problem still occurred. Switching to 40Mhz channel width also seems to alleviate the problem, but I'm not willing to live with the performance loss.

I don't understand why a different channel number would solve my problem, but hopefully it will help someone else if they come across this.

I'm leaving it on channel 36 with a channel width of 80Mhz. It seems OK for now, but if there are more problems in the future I will have to look into cracking the laptop open and checking for loose connections to the WiFi card, or upgrading it to a Wireless-AC 9260 or Wireless-AX200