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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: LizzieW on Wednesday 12 December 18 15:32 GMT (UK)
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Why does my laptop keep switching randomly to Airplane Mode? Is there a shortcut key that I keep hitting by mistake, or is there some other reason? I should have said that I run my laptop via Wi-Fi because if I have it wire-free to the router, it keeps freezing. ::)
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Is it possible that you have accidentally set a schedule to keep putting it into aeroplane mode at a specific time? There are also additional programs, such as one called "if this then that" which can be configured to automatically do certain tasks when certain situations arise.
Martin
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Not as far as I know. My laptop is permanently plugged in to electric socket (unless I take it on holiday with me), so no reason to set anything really. I did check but couldn't see anything untoward. It's not set to close down after 15 minutes if no action, or anything like that, which is why I wonder if there is a shortcut key that I'm hitting by accident.
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I'm puzzled. You say you run on WiFi becuase the laptop freezes if you run wire-free. Surely WiFi and wire-free mean the same?
You don't say the make/model of laptop - any help here....
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-put-a-laptop-in-airplane-mode
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You say you run on WiFi becuase the laptop freezes if you run wire-free. Surely WiFi and wire-free mean the same?
I don't understand it, what I mean is that my laptop is connected to the router by a cable (and my husband tells me it's Wi-Fi and that's what shows when I check on Settings as opposed to being connected by Ethernet ???. The router is about 7 feet away from my laptop, sitting on top of my husband's desk but when I'm connected wirelessly (i.e. without the cable connecting the router and laptop) then my laptop freezes, or just shuts down. I have no idea why. At the previous house before we got a new router, the old router was upstairs and my laptop downstairs and I never had a problem connecting wirelessly.
So, it's because I'm connected by Wi-Fi that my laptop jumps into Flight Mode - it didn't do that when I was connected wirelessly.
Does any of that make sense? I don't know how these things work, it's magic to me that I can sit at my desk typing, push a button and people all round the world (well Rootschatters) can read what I've just typed.
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For a long time I have used my desktop PC connecting to the router using Wi-Fi, but recently I read that ethernet is faster, so I connected an Ethernet cable from the router to the PC. I am making a comparison of the two. If yours is connected to the router with a cable that suggests that it is an Ethernet cable but you would need to check the settings on the PC to find out whether you are actually using ethernet or Wi-Fi.
Martin
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Martin - I'm definitely using WiFi, although when I check both WiFi and Ethernet are connected, but it defaults to WiFi. I'll see what happens if I start using Ethernet again.
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So you have a laptop that freezes or shuts-down when you use WiFi. Given this fault, I think that randomly going into Airplane mode is the least of your issues. It sounds like there is a problem with Windows/WiFi hardware/WiFi drivers. Take the machine to a competent, local repairer with this symptom. If they fix the WiFi issue, I'm sure the Airplane mode problem will be fixed too.
If you don't want to do this, then completely disable WifFi on the machine (see manufacturers documentation to do this) , and continue to use the Ethernet cable to your router.
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I've realised why my laptop keeps going into Flight Mode, in the F keys, F12 is Flight Mode!! When I'm trying to type in the dark - well not exactly dark but using the light from the next room I sometimes hit the wrong keys, especially if I'm trying to use +/=. Unfortunately, although it's so easy to do, to take it out of Flight Mode, I have to go into Settings.
greenrig - Laptop doesn't freeze or shut-down just when I use WiFi, it does it when I'm using the router wirelessly. I don't think it's the laptop, more the way the router is connected. Our grandson who works for Openreach tried to fix it, he knew the problem was in a cable under the road but, obviously couldn't start fixing that without permission and it took another 2-3 visits from different Openreach engineers before one found out the problem was exactly as our grandson had said. The outside cable was fixed but now we think it's probably the router, as the same thing (not the flight mode) happens to my husband's tablet which is only inches from the router. So one day my laptop will be fine and his tablet is playing up, another day it will be my laptop playing up and his tablet is fine.
We are just waiting for Virgin to lay cables down our road, they've done the majority of our town, then we'll probably switch to them. I know some people don't like the company, but we used to have them at a previous address and never had any problems. My daughter is on Virgin cable too and in 15+ years has never had a problem.
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Many laptops have a hotkey to toggle the wireless function on and off. Sometimes it shows an "airplane" symbol, more often a little mast with "signals" being transmitted from it. It's often one of the Fn keys, though the box I'm currently on has a separate row of touch-sensitive buttons above the physical keys. Some, usually older, boxes have a physical switch to turn wireless on and off.
In addition, some boxes are set up so that plugging in a wired connection automatically turns off wireless, commonly promoted as a power-saving feature. In most cases it is counterproductive to try to use a wired and a wireless connection at the same time.
The box I recently set up for my auntie had "airplane mode", brightness and volume controls on the Fn keys, all too easily caught. As a heavy user of those function keys, I found it a real pain to use.
Luckily, these things are commonly adjustable in the BIOS menus, accessible at start-up, so I rapidly adjusted things to normality, where it needed Function+F12 to turn WiFi off. The "power-saving" feature can also be adjusted on every box I've seen it on, either in the BIOS or from the operating system.
Windows also has its own "flight mode" toggle, tucked away in "Settings", "Network & Internet".
Incidentally, "WiFi" is a shortened form of "Wireless Fidelity", and is intended to show that the device can interoperate wirelessly with any other box with the same badge (using the term for a wired connection is just plain wrong, and leads to confusion).
In the early days, there were competing technologies; there still are, but every box needs to support a common standard, referred to as "802.11b", just in case.
"802.11a" was defined first and is faster, but "802.11b" was easier to implement, so became the must-have.
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Hi
Basics first . . . . .
Have you tried turning off (at the mains as well as equipment) all of the equipment trying to function wirelessly?
Including the router?
Wait 5 minutes ,then turn the router back on, wait for it to complete boot up properly
Then turn each piece of kit on.
Ray
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I still don't understand this - Lizzie says she is using Wi-Fi but that her laptop is connected to the router by a cable. Surely Wi-Fi means that you are not connected by cable and receive signals wirelessly?
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Andrew - Thank you for solving the Flight Mode problem. The Fn 12 flight mode key is very near to the backspace and delete keys on my keyboard, so easily touched by mistake when I'm typing in the near dark. ::) So I've now turned off the Flight Mode in Settings, Notifications & Actions, Quick Actions.
Ray - Thank you. The other niggles we've learned to live with for the moment. I know, from experience, that one way to stop the laptop freezing etc. is to make sure I shut it down every night as, if I forget, then the laptop definitely freezes.
Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions and opinions. I'm going to ask for this post to be completed now.
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Groom - I have no idea what I mean. ::) All I know is that my laptop is connected to the router by a cable with a yellow end (is that relevant?) which my husband says means I'm linked by WiFi to the router. As I understand it, if there is no cable between my laptop and the router, that is a wireless connection.
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Are we right in saying that you are using a cable because the box freezes at random when you try to work wirelessly? (carefully avoiding the term "WiFi" ;D)
Wait 5 minutes ,then turn the router back on, wait for it to complete boot up properly
Ray
Most modern routers will use the boot-up time to "listen" to the other networks in the area, and then pick the least congested channel. This might clash with a device which is used only intermittently, such as a baby monitor or the remote for a garage door opener.
These other devices can cause havoc for WiFi on the same channel, especially if the people who wrote the device drivers cut corners on error detection.
Most routers let you override this behaviour and pick a numbered channel in their menus. The trick is to find a channel which is not clobbered by the interference, and this might take a few days of experimentation. Keep a note of which channels you have already tried.
In a city centre, there may not be any free channels to select, even manually. I remember a library in Manchester where I had trouble connecting to their WiFi, because I could not scroll far enough down the list of networks before my box refreshed the list. There must have been 50 visible in the list.
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Andrew - that's right and usually when my husband is using his tablet behind me and he is using the router wirelessly. Imagine a room with my desk and laptop facing one wall and my husband's desk and his tablet facing the opposite wall. There is exactly 104 inches (8ft 8inches) between my laptop and the router. But it seems when my husband is in the way I lose the signal and, you're right he only uses his laptop intermittently. To my left are patio doors, leading into a conservatory and it is when the lights are on in the conservatory that I try to use my laptop in the dark, rather than going across the room to switch the light on. Now, it won't matter because I've turned of Fn12 Flight Mode.
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Hi
I think that Andrew almost got it.
The reason I suggested to "restart" the router was to refresh IP addresses
If your laptop is set to grab the same ip address from the router each time you connect but your OH's machine has already grabbed it, then yes you probably will freeze if the router/drivers are ageing.
You would need to logon to the router and assign the mac address of your laptop to an ip address "further down" the ip addresses available and make it "permanent" eg it always uses (say) 192.168.1.101.Do the same/similar as per your husbands to say 192.168.1.102.
If you have modern fones, ( anyone got a new one? ) they will give you similar problems, and can be handled in the same way.eg 103 for yours, 104 for UH's.If you allow visitor's fones onto your router then they will cause similar potential problems, but shouldn't if you carry out the above .
Your router documentation should show how to do.
The problem re channels is slighltly different as "most" modems use 2 (or 3) channels and if they "clash" with neighbouring routers' channels then you will be "sharing channels" with neighbours thereby slowing down connections because of higher traffic.
You can get your router to select other channels permanently.If you really want to fall asleep at your laptop then read this,
https://www.howtogeek.com/197268/how-to-find-the-best-wi-fi-channel-for-your-router-on-any-operating-system/ (https://www.howtogeek.com/197268/how-to-find-the-best-wi-fi-channel-for-your-router-on-any-operating-system/)
As in most of these cases, find a local tech to review, discuss, action.
Ray
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Virtually every home router out there is set to use DHCP to allocate addresses, and it is a very simple and robust protocol, with low overheads. It's a very rare case where it misbehaves.
Everything gets reset when a home router gets restarted. Whether wired or wireless, each box should ask for a new IP address. There are a few machines which assume that a short break in service can be ignored, but anything over 10 seconds ought to make a box ask from scratch once reconnected.
Of course the router is going to use the same rules to allocate addresses as it did last time, so boxes connecting will be likely to get the same address they had last time. Many boxes allow you to define "fixed" values to allocate to particular machines, if you really need to. Not many people do.
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"It's a very rare case where it misbehaves."
Looks like it is mis-behaving? Isn't that why we are sitting where we are answering Lizzie's query?
"Everything gets reset when a home router gets restarted."
That's exactly why I said "Power on/off". That's a simple restart?
"Whether wired or wireless, each box should ask for a new IP address."
Repeat the ipaddress allocation, either new or pre-allocated.
Prove the pattern that the problem cause is hers, OH's, someone else.
"likely to get the same address they had last time."
Unless other (new or wired) kit beats them (W/L) to it
That's why you set it up to ask for ipaddrs out of -normal- household useage range
"fixed values" ? yup, mac addresses?
"Not many" ? It's been common practise for quite some time.
Apologies to those reading.
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The point is that the "freezing" symptom is extremely unlikely to be associated with IP address allocation.
With the symptom being evident only when operating wirelessly, that's where the real problem lies.
Because the laptop freezes and does not recover, it appears that the associated device driver has problems. There may be a better version on the manufacturer's website; Windows Update rarely offers wireless drivers.
If this doesn't sort things out, the only option is to try to avoid the situation which causes the freeze.
The change of channel is one approach. Another is to see if there is a way of influencing things from within the laptop.
Some wireless adapters have configuration option you can change from within Device Manager. This box allows me to pick a Band Preference (2.4GHz or 5GHz) and various combinations of 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n. Under Windows 10, selecting the Properties of the current wireless connection (in the list when you click on that little wireless icon in the bottom right) will show you the version currently negotiated with the router.
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"With the symptom being evident only when operating wirelessly, that's where the real problem lies."
So, you admit that it is NOT channel-related.
"The point is that the "freezing" symptom is extremely unlikely to be associated with IP address allocation."
Reminder. If the ipaddress is already connected by a prev.alloc and (somehow/some reason/cable) it (the w/l mac) will not connect ( if it is accidentally/deliberately perm allocated. )That's why the suggestion is to pre-alloc frequently-used pieces of kit to non-common ipaddresse range(s).Commonly 192.168.1.100-199 or even (if router allows) 192.168.1+x.nnn
I make no claim to emboldened situations or "probabilities". All possible.
.
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The symptoms appear to be the response of the laptop to some event in the wireless environment. IP addressing can not be the problem because both devices work for a while. If there was a clash with a fixed IP address that would be obvious as soon as the device connected. IP address clash has been a standard Windows error message for over 20 years. In any case, there are very few devices on an ordinary home network
That might be interference from some non-networked device, in which case the channel is the best way of addressing this.
If the hardware and drivers allow changing the band, that would automatically adjust the channel. Moving to the 5GHz band would avoid the crowded area where most of the suspects for interference sit. The default band setting for most drivers is "No Preference", and I've seen loads of boxes decide that 2.4GHz is the easier option.
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Thank you for your discussions ::) I understand what you are saying about having different IP addresses, I'll tell my husband about that.
The other thing is that both my laptop and my husband's tablet are barely a year old and the router was also new when we moved here August 2017. We think a lot of the problems are down to BT (we actually use PlusNet, but everything comes down a BT line), when we first moved in the connection for the router was in the sitting room, and our laptops were in our study, which is through 3 thick walls (1926ish building) and my husband couldn't get his tablet to work at all unless he took it into the sitting room. Not a lot of good when the paperwork he needed to use was in the study.
Eventually, after a lot of pushing - and BT trying to tell us it was the fact that we had the "wrong" telephone plugged into a nearby socket - we had the router moved to the study.
As my husband only uses his tablet rarely, we will probably stick with the configuration until such time as we can get cable.
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We do have separate IP addresses 192.168.1.XX and 192.168.1.XY so that's not the problem. There's also a IP DNS no. which is 192.168.1.ZZZ. In that case both tablet and laptop have the same number.
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Just found this after a few days absence. On Virgin cable which was great at first, now a lot more have signed up for it fluctuates badly from Zero to 2.5MB I seconds. Unusuable when there is something on like football on a Virgin channel.
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Roger - we didn't have any problems when we had it in the 1990s but perhaps there wasn't as much football then. I'll ask my daughter if she's noticed problems when there's football, although I doubt she watches much TV she's too busy doing other things, work, babysitting for her brother's children (our grandchildren), knitting, sewing, embroidery etc. she's one of these people who doesn't know how to sit down and relax - unlike her mother ::)