Troubleshooting Sony Vaio intermittent WiFi connection?
Two things come to mind:
Uninstall SmartWI
The VAIO SmartWI product, in my opinion, is not a solid product and may be introducing the unreliability. I prefer to let Windows itself manage the wired and wireless network connections. That includes WiFi and Bluetooth.
Disable Power Save Polling on the VAIO
Power Save Polling (PSP) is used to place a wireless radio into a powered down state for brief periods of time. If there are mismatches between the client and the WAP, intermittent access problems can be had.
Disable PSP and place the VAIO into Continuous Aware Mode:
- Click the Start Menu and type "ncpa.cpl" (sans the quotes) into the search box and hit enter
- Right-click on your wireless adapter and select "properties"
- Click the button that says "Configure."
- Go to the Advanced tab.
- Select the Power Management property on the left side of the dialog box
- Uncheck the option that says "Default / Auto" (or whatever verbiage is used to describe letting the driver determine power usage) and choose the option for "Highest / Maximum Performance" (or whatever verbiage is used to place the transceiver into an always-on state).
- Some have said that if the slide is already at the highest setting for maximum performance, you shold move it down to the lowest setting, click "OK" and then go through the above steps again to move the slider to the highest setting.
Your other option is to tweak the PSP settings in the router itself, however that might be a bit advanced. If battery life isn't a big issue for your own devices on your home network, placing clients into a high performance setting will be fine.
There are many complaints of this kind on the Internet for Sony VAIO.
Some remedies that I found were :
- Set the router to broadcast the network name (SSID) (source)
- Verify that power output is 100% for the adapter (in Properties of the Atheros card, Advanced tab, select Power Output from the list) (source)
- Disable IEEE 802.1X authentication (in Properties, Authentication tab, uncheck Activate IEEE 802.1X authentication for this network) (source)
- Uninstall troublesome software : Boot in Safe mode and see if the problem disappears. If so, you will have to find the product that is responsible for the problem. This can be a security product or, as in here, Broadcom management.
- Use another wireless card. As yours is built-in, you might try a USB card.