a6210 dropout on win10 PC

I found a fix for a WiFi dropout issue that I have been having for quite some time on my Win10 PC.  It has to do with a USB port setting.  You may/maynot have the same issue.  I applied many 'solutions' that I found by Googling this issue - none permanently fixed the problem.   And sometimes I would have to reboot to get my WiFi back - and sometimes even that did not work. 

 

In my case, I have a Win10 PC with a 'Netgear A6210 USB Adapter' plugged into one of my USB 2.0 ports.  This adapter gives me a WiFi connection to my router.  Recently, I uninstalled, then reinstalled the Netgear software to get back to its default state, but still showed the same dropout issue. 

 

I finally decided to peruse the Netgear manual - what an idea - and I found the following paragraph in its troubleshooting section: "USB devices go into sleep mode if a Windows USB feature called Selective Suspend is enabled, which it is by default. If your adapter or another USB device goes into Selective Suspend mode, the network disconnects. To prevent this type of network disconnection, disable Selective Suspend."

 

I did the following to disable my Win10's 'USB Selective Suspend Setting' mode:

* Start\Windows System\Control Panel\Power Options\Change Plan Settings (from Balanced)\Change Advanced Power Settings
* click 'USB Settings'
* change 'USB Selective Suspend Setting' from 'enabled' (default) to 'disabled'
* click 'OK'

 

My Win10 PC has been running fine without ANY dropouts for 3 weeks now.  This one change solved my wifi dropout issue.