Windows 8 constantly losing WIFI connection

Apr 30

I recently bought myself a new PC (Dell Inspiron 2350) with Windows 8 (no really it is not so bad with a touch screen), and have been having constant problems with the WIFI connection disconnecting, and then often it would not even being able to see mine or any other nearby WIFI network. The problem more often occurred during downloads or streaming.

After much googling, the only suggestions I could find were regarding the power management settings, which I will include it below for brevity as I did do this anyway even though it did not solve my problem.
As my laptop was having no such issue, so I did not consider the router to be part of the equation, but it seems I was wrong. It turns out the issue was solved by changing the channel on my router WIFI settings, to channel 10 in my case.
After a bit of research I discovered that the mid range channels can be more problematic due to the fact they are usually the default setting on most routers, so you can get more interference from your neighbours WIFI, and the higher channels have less chance of signal loss.
Here is an informative article on the topic.

Why this was only affecting my windows 8 PC and not my laptop I cannot be sure, I would guess it just has a more tempremental wifi adaptor. However after thinking about it, I do recall my kids have complained about losing their xbox live connection quite a lot, so it may not be isolated, hopefully this will fix that issue as well.
Anyway I have had no more drops since changing the channel, so problem solved, so I hope this may prove useful to others.

Here also is the other common solution I mentioned.

Power Management

Windows 8 has a default feature to turn off the wireless adapter card to save power. To disable it :