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The 1,483rd person with connectivity problems on an Intel ac-7260 wifi card

MRose12
Beginner
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New here. I seem to be the 1,483rd person who has problems using an Intel ac-7260 wifi card, and I can't find a link to any solution(s).

 

I installed an Intel ac-7260 dual band wifi/bluetooth card in a Dell Inspiron m4600 laptop. I can always connect at full speed (100+Mbps) via Ethernet to my Arris/Motorola SBG-6782-ac modem/router. However I am having random and frequent dropped connections using the Intel Wifi ac-7260 card when connected to the 2.4ghz band on this unit. What's worse, although I can connect to the network via the 5ghz band with a very strong signal, I cannot surf the internet at all using the 5ghz band.

Summarizing:

excellent speed and reliability via Ethernet

medium speed and poor reliability via Intel ac-7260 wifi card

zero internet access when connected to the router via Intel ac-7260 wifi card

One more point; a technician from Time Warner Cable came here today to investigate and was able to connect nearly instantly via the 5ghz band using his iPAD via wifi, leading us to believe that the modem/router is working correctly and the Intel ac-7260 wifi card or it's drivers are defective, either in the design or in the driver(s).

Has Intel offered any reliable solution in all the time folks have been asking?

Thanks in advance for any help.

microzen

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12 Replies
GRoss3
Beginner
1,119 Views

I can understand your feelings. I've the same adapter and I'm facing the same problem. Wifi is unstable, bluetooh doesn't work while my router works perfectly with my smarthphone and with other devices.

 

Have you tried the last driver ? It doesn't resolve the problem, or at least I'm in the same frustating situation.
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MRose12
Beginner
1,119 Views

I started out with the most current driver, but I see a lot of folks claiming improvements using an older driver, around 16.x.x or so.

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MRose12
Beginner
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I've upgraded the Intel driver today to the newest latest one: 18.12.0.3 and find no improvement at all.

 

Do any Intel folks ever look at these comments/questions?
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MRose12
Beginner
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Finally found a driver that works with my own system - 17.0.0.34.

I have no idea if this would work for anyone else. I found it by trying different drivers one after another.

 

The ones earlier than this don't seem to offer 5ghz support.

I don't know if there will be drops in the connection yet. I've been online only for 22 minutes.

I won't come back here if it never fails, but I will be back if it doesn't continue working correctly.

mr

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GRoss3
Beginner
1,119 Views

I'm using a similar driver and of course no the last one that dropped my wifi after very few minutes..

 

Anyway my driver version is 17.0.5.8 (included by Acer) and 2 days ago I found a little guide regarding the ping and lag problems. For this solution I should thank Lenovo and even Blizzard who decided to publish this ONLY for Intel users.

Here's some links:

 

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/18300813587 Intel Centrino Advanced-N Adapters and Latency Spikes - Forums - Heroes of the Storm

 

and

 

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-8-and-8-1/SOLUTION-latency-spikes-and-network-unstability-on-Intel-WLAN/td-p/1461487 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-8-and-8-1/SOLUTION-latency-spikes-and-network-unstability-on-Intel-WLAN/td-p/1461487

At the moment the wifi is kind of stable and I only had 20-30 seconds of lag, not a single drop of connection, so perhaps it works even if I don't understand why Intel continues to avoid to say that AC-7260 is an awful adaptor or they even suggest di disable bluetooth to let wifi working..

Microzen let me know if "ScanWhenAssociated" trick works even for you.

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MRose12
Beginner
1,119 Views

Since I am using Win 7 I don't find that phrase in my registry.

Therefore I cannot try that trick.

My connection only drops out every 2 or 3 hours or so.

I'll have to find other 'tricks' to improve the situation.

At least when it IS working, it's very fast.

Let's keep trying.

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SJohn20
Beginner
1,119 Views

I have same problem. I RV a lot and need to access wifi at campgrounds. This new ASUS computer will not connect (but the old laptop and both phones will. Think the campground is using cable.

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GRoss3
Beginner
1,119 Views

After a couple of weeks I can confirm that adding "ScanWhenAssociated" with regedit works ! No more lag, no more unstable wifi and ping is always around 50, while I had 150 or even 200 sometimes. It's just ridiculous that a little thing like that was the right solution after all, most of all avoiding to change every single setting of the adapter or even the router (as someone suggested).

 

I've not used the bluetooth yet, but as I don't need it's enough for me.

If you've w7 instead of w8/8.1 try that as well, or google for a similar workaround.

Cya ppl !

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WBate
Beginner
1,119 Views

My issues with this have driven me past the point of frustration. I originally purchased an Asus 2-in-1 with the 7260. Every time I tried to upload material through Dropbox for my job, my WiFi would slow down and then drop out. It was happening every 5 minutes or so. After a couple of days and trying to find every fix I could, I returned the laptop and was talked into buying a Toshiba Satellite instead. The Toshiba has the 7265 in it, and the FIRST day I had it, I started having the same problem. My wife's laptop, our tablets, our phones, our smart tv...everything else works fine. Finally, I went into device manager and rolled back the drivers from the Windows 8.1 to the original 8.0. THAT fixed it. For months, I had no connection problems.

And then I made the foolish decision to upgrade my laptop to Windows 10. The new drivers are WORSE than the old ones!! I downloaded the old drivers from Intel, uninstalled and deleted the current drivers, and then restarted my computer. When the computer rebooted, it reinstalled the Windows 10 drivers that were supposed to have been deleted. I uninstalled and deleted them a second time and tried to install the old drivers, but I got a message that it couldn't because there was a newer driver already installed! I have already tried all the updated drivers from Intel, and none of them work. A couple of them made the internet almost unusable.

I am fed up. Intel knows their products were faulty. There are far too many complaints about this issue, and their "fixes" have not worked for the majority of us. I think a class-action lawsuit is in the works as this is too far widespread of a problem. I am now going to have to backup everything on my computer and roll back to Windows 8.1 in the hopes of having a consistent internet connection.

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GRoss3
Beginner
1,119 Views

"I am fed up. Intel knows their products were faulty." Totally agree.

After the previous fixing everything was fine, but during this week problems of limited connection have started again, even if after another workaround seems working again.

 

Ofc with bluetooth OFF..so what's the point of this dual adapter ?

And this is not the only useless adapter they've released, because this forum is full of threads regarding wifi problems, published even 1-2+ YEAR AGO and still pending, even with newest drivers who are useless like previous ones.

My suggestion for Intel: quit the adapters market (do as a favour), or refund-replace for free these utterly pieces of garbage.

 

Unfortunately or luckily I still have a warranty for this laptoop but I'd not want to send it to assistance to replace this adapter with another Intel one.

Sorry, but customers are fed up, as already written by tons of people.

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SShar281
Beginner
1,119 Views

I have the same problem except worse. My connection drops every other second making it impossible to even post this reply or log in to any site. I have tried two different AC 7260 cards and gone back to the OEM N-7260 card...same problem. My Roku and Windows Phone don't seem to have any issues. SO it must be something in the Intel software that is causing the "hunting" with my Time Warner Router. Help!!

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iniki1
Novice
1,119 Views

After a full day of zero connection drops, it seems that the following combination worked for me:

-ScanWhenAssociated fix

-Following things in Advanced tab in the adapter device properties:

*Both channel widths set to 20MHz only

*Roaming aggressiveness set to lowest

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