Y500 - Intel Centrino Wireless N-2230 - intermittently drops WiFi connection

[musorka 10]

I've had the Y500 for a bit over a year, and WiFi was always crappy with the Centrino Wireless N-2230. But lately, it went to another level of "crappy"... Every 10-15 minutes, the WiFi connection drops. And it's only on this laptop. Right next to it I have an aging Dell laptop and its connection isn't dropping... Other devices aren't losing the connection, when Y500 does.

The drivers are latest from Intel. I am on Win 8.1 Pro - 64-bit.

Did anyone experience these intermittent WiFi drop issues?

[kemeras 10]

I have the same set up and have been having some problems with the wireless (sometimes it drops to 2mbps from ~30mbps), hasn't shown up on any other computers (everything in the same room has minimum 30-50mbps). I'm pretty much set on replacing the wifi card after getting the whitelisted bios.

[thepharcyde 14]

It's a terrible wireless card however not so bad with Windows 8 whereas Windows 8.1 is a no no. In the end I replaced mine with a Killer Wireless chip. Problem solved however remained on Win 8 for the time being.

[Dead_beef 10]

I have the same Issue with the centrino N-2200 dropping in my Y580

[musorka 10]

I don't understand how the heck Lenovo is able to get away with this. Between disabling the WiDi capabilities, and black-listing wireless cards, this behavior should be illegal.

[dcool45 10]

Preach, My Friend, Preach.........btw are you gonna to mod your bios and switch out the card because i also have the 2230 and want to install the 7260 AC

[musorka 10]

Sorry for the late response, dcool45. Yeah, I would like to get something else, like 7260 AC. Just realized that the stupid BT adapter in the Centrino Wireless-N 2230 sucks as well... can connect to the BT soundbar only in stereo 2.1 mode... My Android and Apple devices don't have this problem... Really getting frustrated, thought Lenovo was better than that...

[dudeone 10]

yes the centrino 2230 is very poor in terms of performance...sadly i got my y510p with it.. best option is to get a new 7260ac..and do bios mod...

[Oderus 10]

I'm looking at doing the same thing. Bought the wireless card before I remembered that Lenovo blacklists cards. Hoping the BIOS change will work well. Not planning on changing any other setting, overclocking, etc. Just want the whitelist/blacklist fixed.

[chun0327 10]

I was having the same problem with my y510p, the centrino 2230 would drop the wifi connection regularly, so I did the bios mod and put in the 7260AC and it works great

[raven2345 10]

Y400 with the 2230, same problem which I am going to try and fix right now.

[raven2345 10]

http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/2874-lenovo-y400-y500-unlocked-bios-wlan-whitelist-mod.html

Btw OP, this is the mod everyone is talking about doing, that I am also going to try. It can be found in the stickies.

[thinkdez 10]

I found two ways to fix the issue temporarily. 1. Reboot the router. Most times my laptop wireless will sync for longer than a day. Sometimes I only get a few hours out of it. 2. completely uninstall the wifi drivers. reboot and then install the latest drivers from scratch.

It's not a permanent solution but hopefully it bides some time for those who are thinking of upgrading. I am reading through the forums here and I will likely be updating to the modded BIOS and upgrading to a 7260 card with AC so I can start getting some 5GHz networking going. I love the Y410p minus this awful wireless card.

[x3maniac 10]

i run into this same issue. it's worst when using ubuntu. sometimes i will connect at a really slow slow speed. the disconnect issues usually happen on windows

[gentlemenace 10]

Yeah, the the general stability of the network card leaves a lot to be desired. I've had times where the connection just refused to stay connected for more than a couple of hours at a time, oddly enough especially when torrenting. While resetting the modem and router does alleviate the issue it's not an ideal solution nor is it one that's always available to me. Lenovo offers a lot of bang for your buck so I can understand cutting small corners here and there but this is an exception and the main reason I've seen a lot of people pass on buying these machines in the first place.

[maak 10]

try disabling "allow pc to automatic turn off this device" in adapter setting in device manager it works for me

I also have that wifi card but till now no complaint "thanks GOD"

[abosamor 10]

7260ac is not working for me i have lenovo y510p

[jonc1028 10]

Does the 2230 and the 7260 use the same number of antenna connections? I am trying to find out if there is more to this upgrade besides flashing the BIOS and plugging in the new wireless card

[octiceps 256]

Does the 2230 and the 7260 use the same number of antenna connections? I am trying to find out if there is more to this upgrade besides flashing the BIOS and plugging in the new wireless card

Yes both have 2 antennas. It is just plug-and-play after flashing the modded BIOS.

[bamboo 12]

I also have the y510p and the intel centrino 2230, I update my Driver to 15.14.0.2 (latest for Win 8.1) yet it still loses the connection...I noticed that if you are downloading and say for example watching vids on Youtube it is more likely to drop the connection :/

[shanetrain 10]

I just bought the 7260 and am going to drop that in my Y500 due to the same issues with the 2230.

Will post back if any issues.

[Bjulkes 10]

7260ac is not working for me i have lenovo y510p

Is not working at all or it just performs badly?

[Aochan 10]

I'm about to buy the 7260 (and flash the BIOS before that).

Some versions of the drivers never gave me problems, but I think I just messed up with something... Latest drivers don't really fix the issue.

[henrylife 10]

Same here, dropping constantly...

Rollbacked to the older driver and I don't experience it that much anymore.

What Wi-Fi cards you guys prefer, which one have OSX compatibility also?

[robohunterx 10]

I've had some weird bugs on my 510p as well, same OS. I've since went to nothing but Ethernet, waaaay more stable. There's actually this obscure function called like "Data Saver" or something like that on windows, that you can find in the Windows Apps settings page, it used to cut me off when I'd hit a specific amount. Go have a check and see if that's enabled. Also try going into Safemode with Networking "Might have to google how to get Win8.1 into Safemode, something about holding ctrl, or shift when you press restart) and see if it still drops. If it works fine in Safe Mode it's probably some weird antivirus or firewall.