What's going on with my laptop?

March 17, 2025 6:17 PM

I have an Asus Tuf Gaming laptop, which I bought within the past year and a half, as far as I remember. It's been decent aside from having low memory, which I've always meant to remedy. Unfortunately, my wifi and bluetooth are now acting up...

Windows basically doesn't see the adaptors when they stop working. That is, the laptop temporarily loses wifi and/or bluetooth capability, sometimes mid connection, and control panel acts as they don't exist. I can restart the machine, and sometimes the wifi will come back on its own, but not guarantied.

It's maddening. I've reinstalled the bluetooth driver from the Asus support site, but that may only be a temporary fix.

This started happening maybe a month ago but appears to have become more frequent the past few days.

Any insights would be appreciated :)

posted by Alensin to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I don't have an answer for you, but when I got a Zephyrus G14 and had teething troubles setting it up, I found the ZephyrusG14 subreddit really helpful: there's a tuf subreddit too, so you might find some answers - or could try asking - there.
posted by 7 Minutes of Madness at 8:02 PM on March 17

It looks like it uses an M.2 wireless module, which makes it replaceable. here's one thread with possible model numbers. A new unit should not be expensive at all. Check YT for teardown instructions.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:53 PM on March 17

I had a similar issue on my Lenovo laptop - the WiFi kept konking out. I dual-boot Windows and Linux and could repro the problem on both so it wasn't the driver. I resolved the issue by replacing the WiFi/bluetooth module. It wasn't too expensive - around $40.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:07 AM on March 18

Best answer: Oh man, I have that exact computer and have been having that exact problem down to the last detail (only mine’s three years old, the problem started last year, and it eventually completely lost the ability to connect). I haven’t taken it to be serviced yet because I have a second computer, but after a bunch of various attempted home fixes, I’m almost certain it’s a hardware issue.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:30 AM on March 18

Response by poster: Thanks for confirming I'm not alone. I guess maybe I should look into another machine. This one is out of warranty.
posted by Alensin at 10:49 AM on March 18

the wifi and bluetooth are typically both on the same little replaceable module. if they're both failing the module is probably failing. assuming the designers didn't do something weird to make the module hard to get to, it would be really easy to replace for someone who knew what they were doing: a 15 minute job or less to swap the hardware. this would be 100% fixable by a laptop person. no need to ditch the thing unless you just don't want it anymore.
posted by glonous keming at 7:14 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

I've been having a similar issue recently on Windows 11 and after nearly a month of nothing helping, some new driver updates from Intel popped up for both Wifi and Bluetooth and seem to have miraculously fixed it. The updates weren't available through the Windows update mechanism, but only directly from Intel. That might be worth a shot if you're able to connect it to ethernet to check for updates.
posted by duien at 1:51 PM on March 19