Windows 7 Connectivity Problems in Public Hotspots

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Normally when I blog about a solution to a problem, it is because a customer has called me a let me know they are having an issue with a Microsoft product or service. Today I received a very frustrated call from my significant other letting me know she wanted to hurl the lovely HP netbook I gave her into traffic. As you can imagine, my need to fix the problem was enhanced by the fact that I gave her this little machine so she would more productive on the go because she could easily tote around such a purse friendly machine and wanting to launch it into incoming vehicles led me to believe the “productivity” she was supposed to be experiencing was a touch less than optimal.

My other half is a journalist that works for a local radio station and also does some freelance work including blogging from her remote office (Starbucks). You would think that a netbook running Windows 7 and the latest version of Microsoft Office would be the perfect mobile tool to help her keep up with her blogging. As it turns out… a laptop that simply will not connect to a public WiFi hotspot makes it pretty hard to access your blog (she runs ShopHalifax which is a cool little fashion and shopping blog for folks interested in the goings-on in Halifax Nova Scotia) and an afternoon of getting caught up quickly turns into an afternoon of plotting the many satisfying ways one could traumatize that poor little PC.

The call started off with “How come the wireless network at Starbucks hates my laptop?”. I had heard this complaint before but wrote it off to finicky wireless access points that need to be rebooted from time to time because the machine works fine when is at home where I have enough WiFi signal to transfer files from 3 blocks away. Combine that with the fact that I have yet to discover a wireless router that doesn’t start becoming problematic over time requiring the odd reboot and you have a recipe for a very unhappy blogger. The comment that got me thinking was when she did manage to get connected, web pages took an exceedingly long time to load. That’s interesting… if other people are connected and not complaining about the speed of the network, then simple troubleshooting would say one of these things is not like the other and is most likely the root of the problem.

A quick jaunt to the Microsoft Support Knowledge Base revealed a fun little article (KB Article 928152) that pretty much outlines the exact problem she was having along with the likely cause. Power Management is a wonderful thing, it helps ensure we get the most time out of our battery when on the road and away from a power source. Accomplishing the goal of longer battery life is not without its little sacrifices though. You give up a little screen brightness, some speed and (unknown to a typical end user) some wireless signal. For the most part, that is not such a big deal because many WiFi routers support 802.11 Power Saver Mode where the PC basically puts the wireless card to sleep until it is requesting some data and the router caches data meant for that PC until such time as the network card is brought to life and requests the aforementioned data. If the router doesn’t support 802.11 Power Saver Mode, it continues to fire data at the PC’s wireless card even when it’s asleep and depending on what the connection state of the PC is, that can manifest itself in connectivity problems, network drops and poor performance.

With Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Power Management capabilities of the operating system allow you some fairly granular control over the devices in the system based on the existing power state (battery vs. plugged in). The operating system also provides Power Plans that allow you to preset the way you want the PC to perform in certain situations. By default in Windows 7 there are three Power Plans provided including High Performance, Balanced (default) and Power Saver (you can edit existing plans or create new ones to suit your needs… you can even set these by Group Policy in large corporate environments). It just so happens that in Power Saver and Balanced, the default behavior is to turn on 802.11 Power Saver Mode on the wireless card whereas the High Performance Plan actually turns that setting off. Soooo… if you are sitting in a coffee shop without your power adapter and the laptop defaults to Balanced or your set it to Power Saver to ensure you get lots of time to update blogs and consume pricey coffee… you could run into difficulties on some wireless networks that are using a “cost effective” wireless router that doesn’t support 802.11 Power Saver Mode. The router will be blasting data to your PC and your wireless card will be happily snoozing away.

The fix for this issue is outlined in the KB Article I mentioned above and breaks down like this (for Windows 7… Vista instructions can be found in the KB Article) :

  • Option 1 - Plug in your PC because the settings are different between being plugged in or running on battery and Windows will set your wireless card to Maximum Performance as soon as you plug the PC in.
  • Option 2 - Change the settings of the Power Plan that you will be using when you are running on battery to ensure that the wireless card does not enter a power saving mode.
  • Click the image Battery icon on the taskbar in Windows 7
  • In the Popup that is presented, click the link that says “More Power Options”
  • In the “Select a Power Plan” dialog box that comes up on the screen, note the Power Plan that you want to modify and click the link to the right of it that says “Change Plan Settings”.
  • You will be presented with the “Change Settings for plan:” dialog box where you will click on the link at the bottom that says “Change Advanced Power Settings”.image
  • The “Advanced settings” dialog will pop up on the screen and should have the name of the Power Plan you want to change at the top of the screen as shown in the image on the right. If this is not the plan you want to change, you can click on the arrow to the right of the currently listed Power Plan to choose the one you want to change.
  • In the scrolling list of options, expand “Wireless Adapter Settings” and then expand “Power Saver Mode”
  • You will then be able to click on the setting to the right of “On Battery” and set it to “Maximum Performance”
  • Default setting for Power Saver on battery is Maximum Power Saving
  • Default setting for Balanced on battery is Medium Power Saving 

This should resolve the connectivity issues in Public Hotspots (power related ones anyway) as it basically assumes that you are never connected to a router that support 802.11 Power Saver Mode. One caveat is that it does have a 2-9% impact on battery life depending on the manufacturer and the state of the battery in your laptop. Small price to pay though if the most important thing you need to do is get online. Long battery life won’t make inability to connect to a wireless network any less frustrating.

In closing… I should apologize to my better half for the assumption that the problem had nothing to do with her PC. Sorry honey… Red rose