Solved Win 8.1 limited wifi connection - NOT laptop

Hi gurus,

I'm having some problems suddenly with my wifi on my Windows 8.1 machine. This is a desktop PC with a small USB wifi-N adapter from TP-Link.
Every time I boot, it gets only a limited connection with my router. Simply disconnecting and reconnecting solves the issue.

The TCP/IP stack reset doesn't work. It gives me the "access denied" error. I have full permission over the netsh.exe (changed that already) and I run an elevated command prompt.

I have also already unmarked the "allow Windows to turn this device off" option, and also enabled the "allow download over metered connections" option.

This basically has me stranded ...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Is firewall blocking something? initially?

I'm assuming you've googled this "tp link limitied connection windows boot" or similar..

brooksndun said:

Is firewall blocking something? initially?

I'm assuming you've googled this "tp link limitied connection windows boot" or similar..

Click to expand...

I haven't tried disabling firewall yet. I'll come back to that one.

Nor did I google anything specific to my hardware as the number of reported issues with 8.1 + limited connectivity are very widespread I just assumed Windows is at fault here. I'll look for something more specific to my hardware in the meantime !

Can't believe how dumb I was ... It turns out that Windows 8 installed the wrong driver by itself. Instead of taking the one from TP-Link, which I downloaded, it installed another one: the one relating to the chipset inside the USB dongle (some Realtek one). I had to "overrule" this by selecting "have disk" in my attempt for a driver installation and THEN point to the TP-Link driver. Seems to be working fine now !