Dell XPS 5ghz Frequent Dropping and Reconnecting

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mudguard

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#323961 9-Feb-2026 10:02

So I'm working from home full time and to be clear, the XPS is not the work laptop, it's my personal laptop. The work HP works fine.

My XPS is getting on, XPS 9510 but has and is generally working brilliantly. I do a little video and photo editing which is the most taxing thing it does. However of late I've noticed it struggling to connect and when it does, dropping to the 5ghz connection at home. I'm sitting in the same spot so it's not like anything has changed. My previous job involved extensive travel so I really didn't notice how often the wifi was connecting to either of the options at home.

Before I ordered a new wifi network card I realised that mine is soldered to the motherboard. Most complaints online are in regards to the software that actually runs the card? Killer Wifi? Drivers for it are up to date but quite old. My machine won't go to Win 11.

All the other devices in the house have no issue connecting to either network. Until today I had both SSIDs with very similar names with the same password. I did change the 5ghz name and password to something different just to check, but the issue has been there prior to this and it didn't change anything. So it's safe to assume it's my XPS.

Should I just buy a USB wifi adaptor and call it a day?

michaelmurfy

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#3459853 9-Feb-2026 10:07

These days there is no point in having separate SSID's. I would recommend combining them so all devices can either work with 2.4GHz or 5GHz (they should connect to 5GHz by default, if supported). Devices designed to work on 2.4GHz only simply won't be able to see 5GHz and should continue to work fine (I've never had a device with issues here).

Also check you're operating on the lower channels for 5GHz and not using DFS.

I've found the Killer WiFi software to be awful but don't think it is this.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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cddt

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#3459862 9-Feb-2026 10:44

Boot into a Linux environment and see if you still have the same issues. Have encountered enough weird wifi issues in Windows which suddenly disappear under Linux.

sqishy

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#3459864 9-Feb-2026 10:46

Hi, I had a Dell a few years back and experienced the same Wi-Fi issue. A lot of people reported it to Dell and waited for updated drivers, but the results were mixed. I did some research and found that changing a few settings in Device Manager helped — specifically, under the device’s Properties → Advanced tab, setting Roaming Aggressiveness to Highest.

r0bbie

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#3459963 9-Feb-2026 14:27

When you said wifi drivers are uptodate - did you go to the wifi vendors website and check eg intel - not just looking at dells website

mudguard

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#3460019 9-Feb-2026 15:21

r0bbie:

When you said wifi drivers are uptodate - did you go to the wifi vendors website and check eg intel - not just looking at dells website

As far as I can tell, going to Intel, I'm on 12.0.0.1118 which is the latest for the card, dated 15/06/2021. Reading an old text message to a friend, this has been an issue since at least 2022.

Batman

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#3460119 10-Feb-2026 08:13

try different drivers. usually there is the generic driver and the dell driver. the dell driver is extreeeeemely bloated.

may or may not help you.

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mudguard

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#3460142 10-Feb-2026 10:26

Batman:

try different drivers. usually there is the generic driver and the dell driver. the dell driver is extreeeeemely bloated.

may or may not help you.

Yeah that may be outside my skillset, I'm not sure of the ins and outs of grabbing a different driver. I guess I could just re-download the current one and save it, then what, find an alternative that works for the existing card? Disable existing, then install the new?