Windows 11 and failing Auto Connect

[MarkR-UBS]

I'd like to ask for some help please if you can assist us to overcome a problem we're encountering.

We have 10 Meraki MR36 AP's on site. Very happy to provide config where needed and roughly around 100 user laptops on site that utilise the wireless.

We have a problem where if a laptop is folded and/or logged out and it loses WiFi sometimes it won't auto re-connect. This persists until somebody does log in to the laptop and then they can connect to the same WiFi network again.

This does not happen on a specific laptop or from a specific AP, it doesn't happen to all laptops either and it doesn't happen every time, it is very intermittent. The laptops are set to go through a proxy so they are not permitted direct http or https access to the outside world.

Any help appreciated regarding settings or if anyone has experienced it.

[alemabrahao]

Some laptops may disable the WiFi adapter during sleep or logout to save power, and not re-enable it properly until login.
 On affected laptops, go to Device Manager > Network Adapters > [Your WiFi Adapter] > Power Management and uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

[alemabrahao]

You can also try this.

To be more specific change this from sleep to never.

[gary4321]

We had a similar issue, credential guard on windows 11 was causing this.

[MarkR-UBS]

Hi,

Would this not affected it all the time though not just randomly?

[gary4321]

In our case the issue was random.  Disabling credential guard fixed the problem.  We eventually implemented cert auth.

[PhilipDAth]

This is 99% likely to be a bug in the WiFi driver.

Find out what kind of NIC you have (e.g., Intel xxxx), go directly to the NIC manufacturer's website, and try downloading that driver.  Don't bother going to the OEM of the notebook.  They tend to be bad at publishing the driver updates.

It is also possible that there is a general firmware/UEFI bug on the machines.  Try running the OEM manufacturer update utility.

[JonoM]

Hi @MarkR-UBS,

I would agree with what everyone has contributed so far in this thread and it sounds most likely that the WiFi adapter is going into some sort of 'sleep' mode to conserve power.

If you ever want to confirm this behaviour, you can take wireless packet captures and review them in WireShark to look for the Probe and Association packets to confirm they are being sent by the client. For example, here are a couple of screenshots from one of my test clients [c8:b2:9b:5f:6f:1d], proving that the client is looking for and connecting to the SSID:

[BaskaranGanesan]

• Identify Affected Laptops: Keep a log of which laptops experience this issue. Are they specific models? Do they have the same Wi-Fi adapters?
• Check Power Management First: This is the easiest and most frequent fix. Apply the power management setting change to a few affected laptops and monitor the results.
• Verify 802.1X (if applicable): If you're using 802.1X, test if a laptop can connect before login if you manually trigger it (e.g., by initiating a connection from the network icon). If it only connects after login, machine authentication is almost certainly missing.
• Update Wi-Fi Drivers: If power management doesn't solve it, try updating drivers on one of the problematic laptops.
• Packet Capture (Advanced): If the issue persists, a packet capture on the Meraki AP and/or the client laptop during the disconnection/reconnection attempt (when logged out) can provide valuable insight into what's happening at the network layer. This can show if the client is sending association requests, if the AP is responding, and where the process breaks down.