Losing WIFI several times an hour on Omen 17

[CherylG]

@Clevor

 Have you tried reinstalling wireless driver? Download and Save it. When complete double click to install:

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp87001-87500/sp87477.exe

HP SA is pretty flaky in lots of machines. I had the repeating driver suggestion and completely uninstalled it for a month or so. After I reinstalled it doesn't find any updates. On another machine it works flawlessly- for now.

[Photoray002]

@CherylG  true.

The wifi card might possibly be listed in the Device Manager as an unknown device also.

It would have a listing for Other Devices. You can uninstall whatever is there and reboot.

You power options might possibly make a difference if you change it to High performance.

Wifi cards can have Power Management Properties in the DM to allow Windows to turn it off to save power.

But I doubt any of that will help.

You could reinstall the driver for the card. If you have a Realec bluetooth card, the wifi wlll usually be Realtec also.

But if it does not help, like I said earlier, return the laptop for repairs which is what I have found to be the case 99% of the time.

[Clevor]

I finally figured out the Realtek device IS the WIFI card and Bluetooth. I never knew Realtek built WIFI cards; I always thought they only did audio.

I tried everything: looked for an updated driver, which there was one, but after updating it the problem persisted. So I uninstalled the card in Device Manager and rebooted, and it found the same driver, but that did not fix the problem. Next step was reset my WIFI router, although I knew it was working fine with my other three computers. No dice. Also tried the Network Reset option in Windows 10 to no avail.

Other than the WIFI dropout, my Omen is a solid machine and it has passed all my stability and stress tests and benchmarking with aplomb, except of course those 90-98 C peak temps when the CPU is stressed, so I prefer to keep my unit rather than get it exchanged. In which case I have to upgrade to Windows 1803 again, and reinstall Microsoft Office and all my benchmarking software again like 3DMark, PCMark, VRMark, etc., and redo the stability testing. I contacted HP tech support and they are sending me another WIFI card and arranging for an HP tech to install it, although it's pretty simple but I guess it's to keep the warrantee valid. For all the trouble, they are sending me the Intel 802.11 ac [2x2] card to try instead (it  a + $10 HP option). Not sure why it costs a bit more, maybe because it's Bluetooth 5.0?

With my other laptops, WIFI issues like this are fixed via driver updates from the manufacturer, or Win10 updates, but being I seem to be the only Omen owner with this problem, I don't see that forthcoming, so replacing the WIFI card seems the most viable option at this point.

[Photoray002]

Ya, thats what I was afraid of.   Keep us posted.

BTW: I was wondering if you could do us a favor? You mentioned you configured the bios to adjust the battery charge settings.

Could you post a photo or two of that bios in that new series laptop? We as volunteers dont have access to such information unless we go out and buy a product ourselves to evaluate.

Knowing the changes to the new bios would help others out.

Thank you.

[Clevor]

Hey Photoray, sorry but I no longer have the Omen laptop so I can't send you a pic of the BIOS. To make a long story short, HP told me they cannot swap out the WIFI card at my house with a different one. I had to either send it in for repair or get the laptop exchanged by the dealer. Since the laptop was 2 weeks old, no way I wanted it repaired. Fortunately, the Amazon vendor agreed to take it back for refund.

Frankly, if the WIFI worked, I probably would have kept the HP. But since I had a valid reason to return it to the dealer, I started to look at other options. I came to my senses and realized that for my purposes, the way to go was a desktop. I needed a machine for day-to-day use for e-mail, web browsing, and streaming live TV. It will be running 8-12 hours a day since I am retired. With the pathetic battery life and screen limitations of laptops (and overheating problems), a desktop is the way to go.

After returning the HP, I briefly considered going all out and getting an MSI GT75 Titan for $1000 more, probably the top gaming laptop on the planet right now. Except I found out that to add more RAM or to upgrade it in speed, virtually the entire laptop needs to be disassembled since the #1 and 3 RAM slots are underneath the MB. These must be populated first when installing RAM. Really a stupid design for a high end gaming laptop.

Coming further to my senses, I ended up getting an MSI Aegis 3 Plus desktop. For about the same price as an Omen 17T with i7-8750 and Geforce GTX 1060, I get an i7-8700 and Geforce GTX 1080 - a HUGE upgrade. Plus everything is upgradeable (CPU and GPU). With the price I saved on that over the MSI GT75 Titan, I can drop $700 on the best gaming monitor available right now, the Asus PQ279L (165 Hz, 4 ms, QHD monitor with IPS screen). Since my Dell XPS and Lenovo Yoga 920 each have TB3 ports, I could take the Geforce 1080 out of the MSI and run it off the laptops via an Akitio Node. In addition, I could hook up that killer Asus monitor to both laptops via a TB3 dock with minidisplay port (the Lenovo has a UHD 4k screen).

HP has a great community forum though, with active support. The MSI forum sucks. The HP Omen X is actually a copy of the MSI GT75 Titan except it doesn't have the robust, all-out cooling system. But from what I gathered, even the MSI had overheating problems with the 8th gen i7 and i9s. And battery life during gaming was maybe 1.25 hours!

[Photoray002]

A good gaming desktop cant be beat by any laptop, I agree.

Good luck.