Last week, I made some changes in the power features on my laptop as I was going to Cambodia and wanted to save the battery as much as possible. Used the mousepad while I was gone, so no big deal.

Came back, plugged in my usual mouse in the USB port and, within 2 minutes, the Wi-Fi turned off. Now, if I plug in the mouse in the USB port and then if I move the laptop even a fraction of an inch, the bloody Wi-Fi disables.

Anyone any ideas how I can fix this? I'm not the world's biggest techie by any stretch of the imagination. I did put all the power features back to Default, but that hasn't helped at all. The Wi-Fi is fine when I use the mousepad, but practically unusable if I use the USB mouse as it's on and off every two minutes.

Don't like the mousepad anywhere near as much, so it's a pain.

I'm getting off line now for a few hours but, if anyone has any suggestions would really appreciate it.

BTW, the laptop is an Asus, and it's DEFINITELY something I did to the power settings that's making it act this way as some others online are experiencing the same thing.

1) Have you tried a different USB port?
2) Go to Control Panel -> Power Options and make sure that your laptop is set on High Performance. I cannot be bothered to turn my ASUS on right now but you should be able to find the options without too much of a hassle.
If it persists, try setting the High Performance power plan to default or look through the individual options therein.

Hey,

It only has one USB port on the right hand side (and I hate using the one on the left) - yes, the stupid laptop only has two USB ports. So, it's an option, but I'd rather not if I can get the right hand side one fixed.

Sorry, I forgot to mention, I did set the High Performance power plan to default - that was the only fix I managed to find online that made any sense, but it didn't work?

It's so bizarre, as I know my fiddling with the power settings screwed it up, but I would have thought putting everything back to the way they were would have worked. It's really annoying to have to keep reactivating my Wi-Fi connection every few minutes too.

Thanks for the thoughts though :)

There was a week gap between changing the settings and finding out you have a problem, that's a lot of chances for something to break, especially if you've been on a trip with it.

Changing the settings back didn't help.. that means it is very unlikely that it is the settings. Especially when you can reliably replicate the problem by physically moving the machine.

It's more likely that the laptop has developed a hardware fault and activity on the USB bus is leaking into your WIFI switch circuitry.

1) Does using the other port cause the same issue?
2) Does using another USB mouse cause the same issue?
3) Does using a USB drive (copy a bunch of files on/off of it) cause the same issue?

The biggest mistake you can make while troubleshooting a computer is being sure you know what the cause is :P

Sorry, I wasn't specific. I made the changes a week ago. I noticed the problem 18 hours later when I came back and plugged the mouse into the USB port. It immediately started disconnecting my Wi-Fi. It's now been doing this for a week.

I'm also guessing it's this, as others with an Asus laptop are reporting the exact same issue after screwing with power settings but they had managed to reset different power settings so the Wi-Fi issue stopped.

They had done exactly what I did, changed settings trying to save battery power, but the Asus laptop then decided it would save battery power by disconnecting the Wi-Fi when the mouse started to use power (that's one of the settings I chose to turn off, btw, when I was on the road as I wouldn't need it - since I did that, it's now screwed up).

1) Just checked the port on the left - yep, same problem.
2) Yes - in the same port.
3) Don't know.

Will test and get back to you tomorrow on 3 :)

Ah, fair enough.

Is it possible that rather than changing the profile (say, from "High Performance" to "Power Saving"), you inadvertently changed the profiles settings? So in "High Performance", you have "Enable WIFI power-saving mode" in the advanced settings or something? You may be setting is back to defaults, but it won't matter if you've changed the defaults!

What OS are you using and what are you using for changing these power settings? Windows or some ASUS-specific application?

With me and computers, anything's possible :) And yes, at some point I did fiddly with the Wi-Fi power settings. That's why I'm thinking it's my fault :)

I have Windows 7. I first used the Asus-specific application to change the high perfomrance settings both "to" and "back".

Then I used the DOS prompt to set everything back to default.

Will try your suggestion, though and will report back. Sorry, I'm on my way out for the day, but will let you know what happens tonight.

REALLY appreciate the help as I'm about to stomp on my mouse :)

If you accidentally changed the defaults of your power settings, you could use System Restore to go back to a date previous to when you made the changes. May fix the issue if it's not a hardware fault.

I'm sure you've tried that already but I figured I would mention it.

The door opens and you find the word atop: DZI

You venture inwards and you smell the stench of blood all around. Around you find broken armoured and shattered shields. It was likely an armory of sort but perhaps it had been overrun by the evil feline creatures. Up ahead you find an old war journal and as you gleam upon its blank pages, you find an entry all written in blood.

Vl ora, qh ovxglnew, cui pheaqw xs Ljzqxah,
Wrzne owra xs xqr tnemuf ewq ievpb oihbrm.
Gln usaesaf xqnx vnvluim glabypu xqr vjimwr
Ajf rxglrak lbqynvnq xx gln qievp fvxqvr.

Have you tried, or do you have the option, to do a System Restore back to before the problem happened? It may be that fiddling with the power settings twiddled some (unknown setting) that is not un-twiddled when you change your power settings back. Restoring might get you back to where you were, then you can try something else.

Have you got a different mouse to try?

If you want to check if it is power management turning off the device, and not some other conflict, open a new explorer window where you can see 'my computer' and right click on it, choose 'manage'.

Click device manager and pop down to your network adapters, bringing up the properties window for your wifi adapter you should be able to disable all power management on it at the device level.

If it still switches off after this it could be a more serious conflict.