Wi-Fi keeps dropping

It cuts out in the middle of a video call, comes back on its own a minute later, and behaves perfectly the moment anyone comes to look at it. A connection that keeps dropping is maddening in a way a broken one is not, because it will not stay broken long enough to be caught. It is also an easy fault to pay for twice, because it can live in three different places, the machine, the router, or the broadband line coming into the building, and fixing the wrong one changes nothing. We test all three where the fault actually happens, in your home or your office, and tell you plainly which it is. Advice by message is free, you get one fixed quote before any work, and if the honest answer is that your provider has to fix it, we say exactly that.

Send an enquiry Book a repair

No fix, no fee on the repairIf we cannot fix it, you do not pay for the repair. In writing, on every job.
Free advice by messageDescribe the fault and we will tell you what it sounds like and whether it is worth doing, before anyone travels.
We come to youAcross Leeds, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, or we collect and return.
A real person repliesNot a call centre, not a ticket queue: we read every enquiry, day and night, Sunday to Friday. The fixed quote you agree is the price you pay.

The short version

If only one device drops, the fault is that device.
If everything drops together, it is the router or the line.
Four free tests below tell those apart before anyone visits.
An extender can cause the drops it was bought to cure.
A line fault is your provider's to fix, at their cost.

Try this first

Four tests you can run before anyone visits

None of these need tools and none of them cost anything. Between them they tell you which of the three suspects you are actually dealing with, which is most of the job.

Next time it drops, pick up your phone and see whether it is still on the Wi-Fi. If the phone and the television carry on while the laptop sits stranded, the fault is in the laptop: its wireless card, its driver, or a power-saving setting. If everything fails at the same moment, the machine is innocent and it is the router or the line. This single test splits the whole problem in half.
Sit and work next to the router for a while and see whether it still drops. If it holds beside the router and only dies two rooms away, this is coverage rather than a fault: distance, walls and floors doing what they always do. If it drops just as often sitting next to the box, distance is ruled out, and you have saved yourself buying an extender that would not have helped.
When everything drops at once, look at the router's lights before you restart it. Full Wi-Fi strength on your phone with nothing loading, or the internet light changing colour or starting to blink, means the broadband line has dropped rather than the Wi-Fi. That is the provider's side of the fence, and no work on your machine would change it.
Note the time whenever it drops, for two or three days. Drops that cluster in the evening point at congestion, when every household around you comes online at once. Drops at all hours point at the router or the line. That same short list is the evidence your provider will ask for if it turns out to be theirs.

What it usually means

Why a Wi-Fi connection keeps cutting out

Weak signal where you actually sit: the router is in the wrong spot for the building, and walls, floors and distance do the rest
A tired or overworked router that drops every device at once and rights itself after a restart, more often as time goes on
An extender or mesh unit making things worse, with the laptop clinging to the weak far unit instead of the strong one nearby
The machine itself: a wireless card, its driver, or a power-saving setting that quietly switches the card off to save battery
Interference and congestion from neighbouring networks, which is why some connections behave all day and fall apart every evening
The broadband line itself dropping, so the Wi-Fi shows full strength while nothing loads and every device fails together

Not sure which is yours? Describe it in a message and we will tell you, free. Tell us what it is doing and we will work it out.

At a glance

What the pattern of the drops points at

Two things matter more than anything else here: whether other devices drop with it, and whether it still drops beside the router. Find the row that matches what you have watched happen.

What you notice	Usually means	Where the fix lives
Only one device drops, everything else stays on	Its wireless card, its driver, or a power-saving setting switching the card off	The machine, and usually the smallest fix of the set
Everything drops at once, and a router restart brings it back	A router struggling, overheating in a cupboard, or simply worn out	The router. Sometimes a setting or a better spot, sometimes a replacement
Fine beside the router, drops two rooms away	Coverage rather than a fault: distance, walls and floors	Where the router sits, and only sometimes more kit
Fine all day, falls apart every evening	Congestion, as every network around you comes online at once	The router's settings and the channel it sits on, or its age
Worse since an extender or mesh unit was added	Devices clinging to the weak far unit instead of the strong one nearby	The setup, and sometimes retiring the extender altogether
Full Wi-Fi strength, nothing loads, every device fails together	The broadband line itself dropping, not the Wi-Fi	Your provider's, at their cost. Not ours to sell you

If yours is the last row, no new router and no new setting will cure it, and neither would any work we could sell you on the machine. And if nothing is actually dropping but everything is slow, including things that need no internet at all, that is the computer running slow page rather than this one.

What we do

How we tell the laptop from the router from the line

You tell us what the tests above showed: one device or all of them, one room or everywhere, restart needed or not
Those answers narrow the suspects before we set off, so the visit starts with testing rather than guessing
We come to where the fault lives, because this is the one fault that cannot honestly be brought to a bench
A laptop that drops in your back bedroom behaves perfectly anywhere else, so the testing happens in the room where it fails
When only one device is affected we start with the machine: the wireless card, its driver, and the power-saving setting that switches it off
We walk the signal room by room, and look at where the router sits and what the walls and floors are doing to it
We check whether an extender is helping, or quietly causing the very drops it was bought to cure
We take the Wi-Fi out of the picture and test the broadband line directly, because a dropping line looks exactly like bad Wi-Fi
If the fault is the provider's we say so, and write down what we found: when it drops, what the router did, what stayed connected
Your call to their support line then starts from evidence, rather than another week of switching it off and on again
If it is ours to put right, you get one fixed quote before any work begins, and if we cannot fix it you pay nothing for the repair

Is it worth fixing?

Is Wi-Fi that keeps dropping worth paying to fix?

Nearly always worth sorting, because the fix is usually small and the misery is daily. A driver, a setting, a better spot for the router, or retiring an extender that was making things worse costs little, and some of it costs nothing at all. Where a larger building honestly needs more coverage, you see the price of the kit before anything is bought, and we will not sell you equipment the building does not need. The one thing you should never do is pay to have the machine fixed when the machine is not the problem: if the broadband line is dropping, that is your provider's fault, their engineer and their cost, and we will tell you so plainly rather than take the job. That first conversation tells you which side of that line you are on before you spend anything.

This is a wi-fi & home network job. Advice by message is free, then you get one fixed quote before any work starts. If we cannot fix it, there is nothing to pay for the repair.

Send an enquiry and describe the fault

Where we work

We come to you across Leeds, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire

Home or work, day or night, Sunday to Friday. There is no walk-in shop, so we come to the machine, or collect it and bring it back. Start at computer repair in Leeds, or pick your area.

Questions

Wi-Fi dropout questions we get asked

How do I tell whether it is the laptop, the router or the broadband?

Two questions get you most of the way, and both are in the tests above. First, does one device drop or does everything drop? If your laptop loses the connection while the phones and the television carry on, the suspect is the laptop. If everything fails together, it is the router or the line. Second, does it depend on where you are? A connection that holds by the router and dies two rooms away is a coverage problem, not a broken machine. Then there is the tie-breaker: when everything drops at once, look at the router. If the Wi-Fi shows full strength while nothing will load, or the internet light changes, the broadband line itself is dropping, and that is the provider's territory. Tell us those answers when you get in touch and we will usually know where to start before we arrive.

Only my laptop drops. Every other device in the house is fine. What is that?

That pattern points firmly at the machine rather than the network, and it is good news, because it is one of the more fixable versions of this fault. The usual causes are a wireless driver that needs updating or reinstalling, a power-saving setting that switches the wireless card off to save battery and does not always wake it cleanly, or, less often, a wireless card that is failing and needs replacing. That power-saving setting is a very small thing responsible for a great deal of misery. None of these is a big job, we test them in that order on the visit, and this version of the fault is often put right there and then.

Restarting the router fixes it, but it keeps coming back. Why?

Because the restart is a treatment, not a cure. A router that needs rebooting every few days is telling you something: it may be overheating in a cupboard, struggling with the number of devices a modern household asks of it, or simply worn out, and routers do wear out. There is also a version of this that fools everyone: if the broadband line is dropping, restarting the router appears to work only because the line happened to come back at the same moment. Part of the visit is telling those two apart, because one ends with a better router and the other ends with a call to your provider that we will help you make.

Why is it fine all day and terrible in the evening?

An evening pattern is a real clue, so mention it when you get in touch, and note the times down for a couple of days before you do. It usually means congestion: every household around you comes online at once, the airwaves your Wi-Fi shares with the neighbours get crowded, and older routers cope with that worse than newer ones. It can also be the busiest hours showing up a weakness in the broadband line that quiet daytime use never exposes. The two look identical from the sofa and have completely different fixes, which is exactly why we test rather than guess.

What happens if you find out it is my broadband provider's fault?

We tell you, plainly and, because advice by message is free and we do not take on jobs that should not exist. You do not walk away empty-handed either: we write down what we found in plain words, when it drops, what the router did, what stayed connected and what failed, so when you ring your provider you are reporting evidence rather than a vague complaint, and it is much harder for the first person who answers to send you round the loop of switching it off and on again. A line fault is the provider's to fix, at their cost, and no work we could sell you on your machine would change that.

Do I need a new router, an extender, or one of those mesh systems?

Sometimes, and sometimes the honest answer is none of them. A fair share of these faults end with the router moved to a better spot, a setting changed, or an old extender switched off because it was causing the very drops it was bought to cure. If your router came from your broadband provider and is showing its age, it is worth knowing they will often replace it without charge once a fault is shown to them. Where a larger home genuinely needs more coverage, we will say so, explain what kind of kit actually suits the building, and you will see the cost before anything is bought. We do not sell equipment for a living, so you will only hear that you need some when you do.

My connection does not drop, it is just slow. Is that the same fault?

Not usually, and it is worth separating the two before anyone spends anything. A connection that drops out and returns is a network or line fault, which is this page. A machine that is slow at everything, including opening a folder or a document that needs no internet at all, is a computer problem rather than a Wi-Fi one, and the computer running slow page is the right place to start. The awkward middle case is a connection that stays up but crawls, which can be congestion, an ageing router, an extender halving the speed of everything through it, or genuinely slow broadband. We can tell those apart on the visit.

Sound more like one of these?

Tell us what is wrong.

Send an enquiry and describe the fault. We will find the fault properly, give you a fixed quote before any work, and if we cannot fix it there is nothing to pay for the repair. A real person who does the work, not a call centre.