Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A problem

Good afternoon tenforums.

I bought a new laptop this month, which has the Qualcomm wifi card inside. Sometimes it works for a long period of time and others it will not last 5 minutes. The wifi essentially drops and turns to limited connectivity and requires a troubleshoot to fix. The same error appears everytime which is 'The default gateway is not available - Fixed'.

On top of it dropping frequently it also sometimes has extremely slow speeds, downloading at 10kb per second - as opposed to on my poor old laptop where I would get 1.5 - 2.8 mb. These problems are only applicable to this laptop and no other device with wifi experiences this.

I have tried the normal default gateway fixes found on the internet. I have installed numerous drivers and none have so far worked. I have also posted on acer forums (my laptop model) and nobody there has been able to successfully help yet.


Does anybody here have any ideas/heard of this happening before?

The laptop advertised ultra-fast wifi speed and I've got the exact opposite.


Thanks you all


- Sparta

Sparta said:

I have tried the normal default gateway fixes

Did that include
> Check for firmware upgrades on your router
> Test your computer with someone else's router (problem still the same?)
> Check for BIOS updates on your m/b

I am having the same problem with my laptop which has the same wifi card. I've had my computer several moths, but have been unable to connect to my home wifi for the last 10 days.

In my case the problem appears to be laptop-router specific. Every other device in the house is able to connect, and the laptop with the QualComm card is able to connect to other wifi networks.

The driver on my computer appears to be more recent than the 2015 update on my laptop manufacturer's website, and I'm wary of downloading a new driver from a random website that shows up in a google search. Next step is to call my ISP tomorrow to find out whether there was an update on their end.

Similar problem here with same wifi card. Just bot from Amazon. Love the machine, hate the wifi card.

I have ~10 other devices on the network which all work just fine...
4 iphones
2 notebooks (1 MacAir, 1 Lenovo Yoga 14)
1 ipad
2 airport express
1 chromecast

Wifi router is a Linksys 4500.

Have tested the Flex 4 on networks outside my home and it seems to work just fine.
All other devices show solid wifi/internet service. Service is 200 Mbps. Typical iphone speedtest reveals 30-90 Mbps depending on proximity to router.

Speedtest on the new Flex 4 can vary between 1-3 Mbps (obviously impaired) up to 100 Mbps (working just fine).
My upload speed is limited to 20Mpbs and that appears to be unaffected no matter what. Even when download speed is terrible, upload speed is consistently 20 Mbps.

I disabled the card using Device Manager, stuck a USB wifi dongle in and connectivity was outstanding (90Mbps).

So something about this card does not like my network, yet every other device loves it.

I've updated all the drivers. Uninstalled the device and had the system re-discover it. Nothing works.

I figure there is a setting that needs modifying but I'll be darned if I can find it.

Would love to hear any suggestions. Pretty darn frustrating.

Spunk, I'm using the 5ghz band. Channel 149. Only one other network withing range on that channel.

Honestly though, why would the presence of other networks on that channel ONLY effect the Atheros card and none of the other 10+ wifi devices in my home? (I left out an Apple TV in my previous list)

Sparta, I purchased this notebook at Amazon. This is actually the second machine they have sent to me. I exchanged the first for a new machine when these problems occurred hoping is was simply a faulty wifi card. My conclusion is that there is a conflict between this card and my network which is very specific to this card.

I think I fixed this by setting the "roaming aggressiveness" to lowest in Device Manger. After I did this it been working and not breaking as soon as I enable the wifi adapter