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The Acer laptop running Windows 10 suddenly stopped connecting to wifi from my home router beyond around 10 feet. But Mac, iphone, ipad all can connect beyond 10 feet. Not sure what exactly I upgraded on Windows that is causing this issue. This Acer laptop has no issues connecting to comcast xifinitwifi which is Open SSID.

Any hints to fix this issue?

Here are wifi details if it helps: Protocol: 802.11n Security type: WPA2-Personal Network band: 2.4 GHz Manufacturer: Qualcomm Atheros Communications Inc. Description: Qualcomm Atheros AR5BWB222 Wireless Network Adapter Driver version: 3.0.2.201

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  • Have you tried to upgrade your WiFi card driver from Device Manager? Can you check in the adapter's properties in Control Panel (Configure > Power management tab) if the "Allow this PC to turn off this device to save power" wouldn't be checked, by chance? While you're in the properties, you should also check a couple things under Advanced, such as roaming sensitivity (set it to Low or Lowest, it'll prevent your WiFi card from looking for other SSIDs around your main access point), make sure you're on a dual-band frequency (20 and 40 MHz width). Those 3 items often cause connectivity issues.
    – user1019780
    May 9, 2020 at 21:37
  • @Didier Yes, all those conditions satisfied but problem still persist.
    – wifi
    May 10, 2020 at 1:34
  • Could be another router nearby is using the channel. Try changing it. howtogeek.com/197268/… May 10, 2020 at 6:04
  • Apparently, it's at the same time a hardware issue (a poor positioning of antennas in the WiFi card) and software one (no Atheros driver implemented by Acer can compensate for the poor antenna efficiency), as explained in this post (forums.tomshardware.com/threads/…). You might have to open your laptop, locate the WiFi card and unplug the black wire, so that only one antenna out of the two receives your AP signal. They say you won't lose connectivity, but just don't break anything yet...
    – user1019780
    May 10, 2020 at 7:15
  • appreciate your research @Didier. Same issue reported here: community.acer.com/en/discussion/171849/…. I wonder how it is able to connect to xfinitiwifi open SSID whose RSSI is far weaker and higher noise than my router's SSID. Not sure if it's the same problem reported in above forums. Changing the channel also didn't help. By the way, my router is single band(2.4 GHZ).
    – wifi
    May 10, 2020 at 22:23

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A friend of mine just had the same problem since a windows update yesterday. We fixed it today by updating the BIOS driver for his Acer Predator Triton 500 pt515-51 with Killer wifi after trying a lot of fixes including a reinstall. We downloaded the latest driver on the Acer website. Hope this works for you as well.

If not, and you have the same wifi card, try this support post of Killer: https://support.killernetworking.com/knowledge-base/wireless-not-working-after-update-code-10-error/

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