Sporadic but recurring connection dropouts on an Intel 6235 wireless adapter

[idata]

Dear all,

I have the same issues of intermittent sudden connection dropouts as reported by others with the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Wifi adapter and the Intel Proset 15.x drivers!

My system is a brandnew desktop computer with an Intel i7 3770 Quad-Core CPU, an Intel Z77 chipset, an Asrock Z77E-ITX mainboard, 16 GB of RAM, and Windows 7 64-bit.

Previously, I already encountered the issue with this adapter's predecessor, the Intel Centrino 6230 and only managed to resolve it by going back to an older driver version. If my memory is correct, the Intel Proset 14.x version range worked flawlessly, but the 15.x drivers lead to the dropouts (I always use 64-bit drivers).

These can occur randomly after 5 or after 50 minutes. The adapter suddenly disconnects and won't reconnect to the wireless network unless it is reset. The wireless router itself is fine as there are over a dozen devices from all types of brands that connect regularly to it without any problem at all.

The fact that the problem occurs on two different cards (6230 and 6235) leads me to believe that there is a driver problem.

On the 6235, going back to a 14.x driver does not seem to be an option on the table, because the device seems to be only supported by 15.x versions. I already tried going back from the recent 15.2 version to the previous 15.1.1 (after uninstalling through the device manager), but the problem still persists. Now I just went back to 15.1.0 and it's been ok so far, but i'm not very optimistic.

I have tried different changes in the driver settings but with no success. The problem persists!

I'd be thankful for a solution.

Best regards,

Steve

Edited 9/5/2014 by John S. (Intel Customer Support).

The "/message/169514# 169514 Sporadic but recurring connection dropouts on an Intel 6235 wireless adapter" thread will be locked. This thread will remain on the forum for you to reference, but no new posts will be possible on this thread.

The 17.1.0 version of Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software and Drivers has fixes for connectivity related issues with the Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6235 wireless adapter. If you are still experiencing connectivity issues after installing the very latest software and drivers and you require further troubleshooting, please contact Intel Customer Support. If you prefer to ask questions, make comments, and/or receive answers on this support forum (Wireless Networking Support Community), please start a new thread or find an existing thread that matches your specific issue with your specific hardware/software.

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[OPaz1]

Q4 is over...no solution...and it was to be by Q3. Very frustrating.

[ANarb]

I am not sure if this matters but I am running Windows 7 and I have a Linksys E2500 router and after disabling my firewall on my router I can change my "802.11n Channel Width for Band 2.4" from 20 MHz to Auto and it does not disconnect a lot like before. I am not sure if it will work for others but this helped me a bit. My connection is still not lighting fast but it works a whole lot better now than it did before.

[TBela]

tfmaster... I hear you on the speed side of things. My connection runs about half the speed as my old laptop does. I used to be able to get 25-29mbps, during speed tests, but now it spikes and then caps at 9-12mbps. I put my old laptop in the same place as this one and re-test and it still pulls the 25-29 regularly.

[ANarb]

trevvy... It might be the Bluetooth capping you off as well. I know when I have Bluetooth enabled I get speeds from 11 mbps to 14 mbps but once I turn off the the Bluetooth I get much higher speeds from 16 mbps to 20 mbps.

[ANarb]

NM, it started up again yesterday after lasting a couple of days. I used to think HP sucked as a computer company but I'm starting to feel it's the individual company that supply the parts that suck. My Broadcom modem in my 4 year old HP computer works better than this piece of junk. If I could I would would buy only computers with AMD and Broadcom parts but Intel is everywhere so it will not be an easy task. My warranty just ran out so now I am stuck with that piece of junk wireless card.

[idata]

I spent a decent amount of time on this issue trying to figure out why we were receiving such poor throughput and ping loss on a lot of our newer laptops with the 6235 and 6205 centrino chipsets.

I was testing with HP Folio 9470m and HP Revolve G1 and was receiving very poor performance and reliability.

I don't know about root cause exactly, but I found that disabling Bluetooth and NFC in the BIOS/UEFI solved my problem. I went from 50mbps throughput to 130mbps.

Good think I am not relying on BT or NFC…

Background:

A lot of people don't realize that 802.11n can run in 2.4GHz and 5.2GHz mode. The problem is, you cannot easily tell what band your adapter is actually connecting with. You need to look at your router/AP to determine this. Some consumer grade routers may not even tell you. Another option is to use a spectrum analyzer tool like a WiSpy.

In our case, we have an Aruba controller that can report which band a client has connected under. We prefer that our corporate PCs use 5GHz to avoid the overcrowded 2.4GHz band in our facility. With 5GHz, we get more throughput but less range. We are fine with that, because we have a lot of AP coverage.

For testing, I use jPerf to determine what my actual throughput is. My initial tests showed throughput was at around 40-50Mbps, with a lot of ping loss. Our controller was reporting that I was connected on the 2.4GHz band, when there was no reason why I shouldn't be on the 5.2GHz band. I even went to the advanced settings of the driver and told it to prefer 5.2GHz, which made no difference. Additionally, we enabled band steering on our controller, which should coax all clients to connect to 5.2 band if possible & desirable, but fall back to 2.4GHz if required.

I tried disabling various options in the advanced driver settings. Disabling Bluetooth AMP did not seem to make a difference. Disabling bluetooth from device manager did not make a difference either. It was only when going to the BIOS/UEFI screen and disabling it there was I finally able to achieve much better throughput of 130Mbps, and confirm that I was indeed on the 5.2GHz band. Ping loss was non-existent after this change.

This may not help everyone, but this was my experience.

thanks intel! A lot of man-hours went into trying to figure this crap out! fix your chipset!

[JGuzi1]

Guys,

Taking advices from some older posts:

- switched to G (N on microsoft drivers 14.... works with almost the same failure frequency as last 15...)

- i'am shure about AES - only connection

- network is 2,4 G in final

Started ftp with some big iso to download and open window with connection status (54 with excellent range because i'm sitting 3 cm from router)

After about 5-10 minutes status window is closed connection is dropped. This happens 3 times in hour (versus 12 times with N network).

Changed to linksys usb dongle with G network and ... everything is fine connection is stable.

For me, the drivers and change of the network give only a little impact on improving the quality of connection, you can not call that stability..

[lston3]

Hi everyone, having the same issue I want to share my findings. Reading the discussion everyone seems to suspect a driver issue, but maybe we are looking in the wrong direction.

I rather suspect Intels Wireless Managing Software which is typically installed along with the drivers.

I come to this conclusion since I first tried to install the latest driver from Intel via the automatic install feature of Intels Web Site.

This resulted in the installation of driver Version 15.7.0.3 released the 04/18/2013 and included the mentioned managing software.

This didn't fix the issues with the card at all. Tweaking the adapter parameters yielded maybe some improvement but this is rather subjective.

I then did a complete remove of all drivers and intel software packages that were involved with the card, also the bluetooth drivers.

I achieved this by disabling automatic driver installation, removing the intel software packages via the "Add or Remove Programs", uninstalling and deleting the drivers via "Device Manager" and rebooting, and repeating steps as necessary until i had two unistalled devices in the device manger,

the network card and a bluetooth peripherial device.

I then installed the driver-only packages from intel. For both the networkcard and the bluetooth device.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=22786 Networkcard driver https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3502&DwnldID=22996&ProductFamily=Wireless+Networking&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+Wi-Fi+Products&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+Centrino%c2%ae+Advanced-N+6235&lang=eng Bluetooth driver

THIS RESULTED IN STABLE WIFI CONNECTION!!! comparable with all other devices in my network. No tampering with adapter settings at all.

take notice that this was the same driver Version 15.7.0.3 released the 04/18/2013

Therefore I strongly suspect the Intel PROSet WiFi Software to be causing all those troubles.

If anyone wants to test this solution I suggest, to first skip all the driver removing stuff and only remove the Intel PROSet WiFi Software and see if this will already fix the problems.

@intel: Maybe this information will help your developers to identify, isolate and finally FIX this issue!!!

[JGuzi1]

@ leostone

I have done this already - installed only driver for WiFi not for bt without installer. Once from intel package and once from dell package (extracted)

Of course removed all previous drivers and proSet. Was little better but far away from 'no problem usage'

[lston3]

@ jareeq

are you positive PROSet was not installed again with the drivers? To confirm this, there should be no Intel Wifi control panel available in Windows Control Panel, also when viewing the properties for a WiFi network there should not be an option for intel settings.

[JGuzi1]

@leostone

- removed setup for Intel proset from 'programs and functions'

- also removed vidi and other Intel apps

second removed drivers from wifi cards and bt (one by one with 'remove drivers from computer' option)

doing this until Microsoft driver 14. appears (this cant be removed) and then extracted all drivers from Intel package and installed inf only - not sure that pro set software comes back Also dell drivers (this package is smaller than original Intel package) were installed in the same manner.

I understand what you talking about - it can be the clue - i will verify that at home and give you update

[update]

confirmed - there is no services for intel pro set , no additional settings for intel i properties, everything is removed and restarted driver is 14...... Microsoft version. Then downloaded drivers and installed from inf. There is still no proset config and proset services. Big ftp download is started, opened network connections and State of connection. 15 seconds and it is disconnected. No change.

test update

[lston3]

@jareeq: tx for your update. with this information we can probably dismiss the idea that it is the PROSet Software causing the issues. Also I found some discussion that elaborates on the same problems under linux, where the PROSet Software is most likely not running.

This leaves me with the question why my setup is stable so far? I tried all sort of things to provoke a connection break down, yet without success.

Right now i have multiple large downloads running, stressing the CPU with prime95 torture test to produce as much heat as possible, have ping tests running, all is stable ...

I can't say if tomorrow or in a week the picture will be different though.

I can only conclude that maybe the Bluetooth Driver Update wich I talked about, had something to do with it. To confirm I could install Intel PROSet again and see, but since I don't need it and have already spent too much time on this, I won't do this.

btw. I wonder if there are different hardware revisions of the board out there, my harware ids are:

Bluetooth: USB\VID_8087&PID_07DA&REV_7869

WLAN: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_088E&SUBSYS_40608086&REV_24

[SAmst]

Hi,

Until last week I had also drop downs. Now my laptop (Dell Inspiron 15z) with Intel Centrino advanced-n 6235 with windows 8 64bit is working like hell! What I did is very simple I separated 2.4 GHZ and 5GHz by giving them separated names.

1 - login to your router

2 - change SSID name for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / for example: SSID name for 2.4GHz: Society 2.4GHz - SSID name for 5GHz: Society 5GHz

3 - save and reboot your router

4 - In windows search for networks and then connect to your SSID 5GHz network and your done!

[DK3]

Hi leostone,

I registered just so I could reply to your post and thank you.

First off, here's a little background on my problem. I just bought a brand new Asus UX31A. Wifi was workin fine out of the box. After the Windows updates installed that's when the issues started. Wifi connection would drop once a minute it seemed and then it would take about 5 seconds to reconnect before dropping again a minute later and repeating.

I tried rolling back the driver thinking it was a driver issue, but the problem persisted. I tried playing around with the wireless adapter settings as other people have mentioned (disabling N mode, bluetooth, power management, etc.) Problem persisted. I tried uninstalling the adapter and made sure the check box to delete the driver was checked. Rebooted and the problem persisted.

Finally I came across your post. With my original driver installed now (the one that it came with before any updates were installed, version 14.something) and all wireless settings back to default (N mode enabled, etc), I tried your suggestion of just uninstalling the Intel PROSet WiFi Software. I am very pleased to report that uninstalling this software solved my problem!!! Thanks for the suggestion. I'm aware this solution doesn't appear to be a solution for everyone, but so far it's working for me. Stable connection. Am now able to watch a simple youtube video without the connection dropping. Haven't tested my speeds yet, but I'm just happy to have a stable connection.

So now I am considering updating the driver to the latest driver but making sure the Intel PROSet WiFi Software doesn't get installed. But now that I finally have a stable connection, I'm scared to mess around with anything related to the WiFi so maybe i'll just leave it alone.

Cheers mate.

[TDeng2]

Hi all,

Just received a Dell XPS 13 2nd gen ultrabook. It came with the Intel 6235 wifi card and out of the box I didn't notice any particular issues. Today, I applied all the Windows updates that have been piling up for Windows 8. After that, I started getting the stutter, freeze, and slow speed problem. I tried all the drivers (Dell, stock, Intel) and none of them helped. After searching Google for a bit, I found one user's blog where he said he experienced the same thing and that he believes the issue comes from the virtual wifi adapter that the Windows update applied. Curiously, I disabled them and now I have a smooth wifi connection.

Under device manager, network adapter, disable anything that is not Intel 6235. This includes:

microsoft virtual wan miniport adapter

any bluetooth related item

With the stock Windows 8 driver (version 14), my throughput was pretty bad. Updating to the latest 15.8 driver doubled my throughput and the wifi is finally usable. There are no perceivable stutter or freezes. I tested by download a couple Linux ISO and they all downloaded at the max speed of my internet service. Next I tested file transfer speed with FTP on my local network, the results show that the Intel 6235 has less thoroughput than the horribly reviewed Realtek 8188CE wifi card I have in my other laptop. Transfer speed of the Linux ISO maxed out at ~750kbps for the Intel and around 1.2Mbps for the Realtek. At least the Wifi is usable now. My internet is only 6 mbit but I was able to max it out and watch youtube at full quality without stutter.

I hope this helps someone.

[ANarb]

Wow, disable this disable that. If you have to disable all of this stuff the wireless card it is showing you that it is complete and utter garbage. I never had to do this on my notebook that doesn't have an Intel wireless card or even on my Macbook Air which has a lower signal strength than my hp dv4t which I am also running the Macbook on the 5 GHz band and it is further away from the router and have no trouble what so ever. I am seriously disappointed with Intel.

[TDeng2]

Well, I used both Atheros and Intel 5300 on my old laptop and both of them are steller. I dono exactly what's wrong with the 6235 but it is bad.

[JGuzi1]

@leostone

My hw revs are identical

Most strange thing is when network connection status is opened and more traffic is exchanged (about 8 Mbit/s), there is more chance that connection will be broken. When status is not open (and not reopened after signal loss) ,connection is more stable ...

@Society

i have cable modem with integrated router but it works only ony single band. I will try to switch to 5 Ghz and test stability

[JGuzi1]

Switched to 5 ghz with updated drivers (but no intel proset service etc) ...this is a pain it drops connection in few seconds after big transfer arrives. Also using second router from cisco connection is unstable signal is about 46db on first and 40 db on second router (basically 30 cm from laptop) both shows 144 mbit connection. Borrowed atheros works like charm.

Samsung support called to me Friday ... they want to check my laptop. Asked them about eventual cause of this issue and about resolution (waiting 2 weeks for drivers replacement in service is not my dream :-)) they said "Samsung engineer must to check your device ..."

I think I will try this way eventually in case drivers that will be relased at the end of q3 (that joe_intel said) fail.

[ANarb]

I have tried everything listed in here and I still get the same. I have downgraded the driver, removed the PROSet junk, and set my 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz with separate names (I have a MacBook so I did this a long time ago.) and I still have the same dropouts. The only thing that really makes my connection stable is setting "802.11n Channel Width for Band 2.4" from Auto to 20 MHz.If I set it to Auto it will drop even with all the tweaks mentioned here but on 20 MHz only I have no troubles with dropouts. So, it's obviously not hardware if it works for me fine on the 20 MHz only. I thought my wireless mouse was causing interference so I disconnected that and it still would dropout. And thanks to HP's stupid whitelist in the Bios I can't just go out and replace the wireless with any brand I want. So, it looks like I am stuck with a Intel Lemon.

[JIgle]

I got a brand new Samsung one month ago and I am having this problem from the first day, I thought it would be solved with an update of the driver but not. I have tryed everything and the problem persist.

I must say this is really a very disapointing situation for me as I have spent a lot of money in the notebook and I am a professional that makes intensive use of it.

I think we should make the press aware of this and maybe Intel will put more resources to fix it because it seems like they are not doing their best. This problem has been reported many month ago and still not solved!!! It is really bad.

Also I would like to point that this is not an OEM problem as Intel suggests, as it apears on many different makes.

Looking forward for a quick and efficient response from Intel.

A really ungry customer.