Ethernet Intermittent Disconnect

Topic

New Reply

I am running Windows 10 1909 on a Dell  laptop (new). The laptop did not come with an ethernet port so I purchased a Heron Cable ethernet adapter to go into the USB C port. All worked well for several months and now, suddenly, I find myself removed from the ethernet connection and connected to Wifi. When that happens, I no longer see ethernet listed in the Network list in Windows 10.

If I disconnect the adapter and plug it in again the ethernet comes back. This happens about every two days without my doing anything different or any other computers in our home/office being effected.

It would be wonderful if anyone knows how I can make ethernet be my first choice with Wifi as a backup.

Reply | Quote

Replies

There’s a long way using the Settings GUI but it’s so many steps (and would need so many screenshots) that it’s just easier and much faster to use PowerShell.

It may look complicated… but it really, really isn’t – just follow the steps below:

1. Make sure your ethernet adapter is plugged in.

2. *Right*-click on the Start button and choose Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the power menu.

3. When the PowerShell window appears, type (or copy/paste) Get-NetIPInterface then press the RETURN/ENTER key. A list of network adapters will appear, with info in 8 columns. Ignore columns 4, 6 and 8.

You are only interested in the following columns:

1 – ifIndex… (aka Interface Index) an indicator number of each adapter

2 – InterfaceAlias… the ‘friendly’ name of the adapter, e.g. Ethernet, WiFi

3 – AddressFamily… the network protocol; ignore IPv6

5 – InterfaceMetric… posh name for the connection order, low through to high

7 – ConnectionState… is the adapter connected?

Here’s my laptop as an example:

4. Look at column 3 and ONLY pay attention to entries showing IPv4.

5. Look at column 2 and identify the Ethernet and WiFi adapters. Those are the only 2 adapters you are interested in.

6. Make a note of their ifIndex no. (column 1) and InterfaceMetric no. (column 5).

Using my screenshot as an example, my Ethernet adapter has an InterfaceMetric of 5 whilst my WiFi adapter has an InterfaceMetric of 50. As connection preference goes from low to high nos, this means my laptop will connect via Ethernet before WiFi. Your connection order is no doubt reversed (so WiFi shows as connected in column 7)… so there’s one last step.

7. Swap the numbers around.

For example, If I wanted to reverse the network adapter connection priority order so my WiFi adapter connected first then, in the elevated <b>PowerShell</b> window, I would use the following 2 commands (which you can copy/paste one after another for your own use) to just swap the InterfaceMetric nos. around:

Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceIndex "16" -InterfaceMetric "5"
Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceIndex "2" -InterfaceMetric "50"

If you have any doubts, just post a screenshot of the results shown by the Get-NetIPInterface command (or show the info as text) and one of us will reply back with the 2 commands for step 7.

Hope this helps…

Reply | Quote

Hi.

This is an incredible longshot, but I had a similar issue and found the power adapter was bad. It was or had been overheating and was unreliable.

Mike

Reply | Quote

It could be that the ethernet adapter does not properly support device sleep or other power saving settings, and when Windows tries to sleep the adapter in a moment when it is not busy, it’s instead put into a coma, so to speak.  I faced a similar issue with a USB3 to ethernet adapter I bought for my Acer Swift (which also lacks an ethernet port), though in my case it was in Linux.

In Windows, you should be able to go into the Device Manager and drill down to where it has a checkbox for “Allow Windows to turn off this device to save power,” or whatever the actual text to that effect is.  Uncheck that, select Ok, and hopefully, that will fix it.

Why it worked for a while first, though, I do not know.  Maybe Windows downloaded a new driver with different default power saving settings.  Or, it could be that the adapter has had a hardware failure.  A lot of things have a 1 year warranty, so you may be covered by yours still.  I’d call them and see if you can exchange it if the control panel thing does not work.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

Reply | Quote