After 15 months of trouble-free (but possibly slow) operation, the Intel 6235 wifi card installed in my laptop (running 64-bit Windows 7) started to drop the connection - soon rarely staying connected for more than 5 minutes at a time. I followed all the troubleshooting steps suggested in various threads on this site (including installing the latest drivers), but without success. I therefore decided to replace the card with an Intel Ultimate-N 6300.
When I first booted the laptop after installing 6300, the wifi speed was a revelation: the speed appeared to be 3-4 times the speed of the old card. But within minutes, the card began dropping the connection, and within a couple of hours, it stopped connecting to the internet entirely.
The card now continuously reports that it is connected to the wireless network, but that the network has no internet connection. However this is not the case: with an ethernet connection to the router, the laptop is able to connect to the internet without a problem, and a different laptop (with a different model of wifi card) connects to the internet without any issue.
The card also takes 2-3 minutes to start functioning at all, after a reboot. And if, during this time, I try to access Network Connections, the laptop freezes until the connection has been established.
I have tried every suggestion that I have come across for troubleshooting both 6235 and 6300 connection issues, including:
- reloading the drivers
- loading different versions of the driver - 15.0.0.75 (29/11/2011), 15.11.0.7 (26/01/2014) and 15.15.0.1 (17/11/2014)
- running with the PROSet software, and running without the PROSet software
- changing the router security to WPA(2)
- disabling TCP/iPv6
- disabling Windows turning off the card to save power
- different router wireless channels
- Netsh int ip reset and Netsh winsock reset
My router settings include:
Security mode: I have selected WPA/WPA2-PSK (The only other options are WPA, WPA2 and WEP.
WPA algorithms: I have selected AES (The only other option is TKIP.
Channel width: 20/40MHz (The only other option is 20MHz)
801.11 mode: 802.11n only
There is one measure that enables the card to connect to the internet: restricting the router (and therefore all devices using the network) to 802.11g, but this is clearly an unacceptable workaround for an 802.11n card. And for the last 24 hours, I have been finding that the card is again losing the connection from time to time, and the connection can then only be restored by rebooting the PC.
It has been suggested that the driver for the 6300 is very similar to that of the 6235, and therefore the issues that I am now facing could have the same root cause as the issues that I was experiencing with the 6235.
I would be grateful information on how to resolve the 6300 connection issues.