The NCSI changing feature fixed my Wi-Fi issue, finally!

[S. Ali SH.]

I had been dealing with a Wi-Fi connection issue on Windows 10 for quite some time. The problem manifested in a peculiar way: whenever I attempted to connect to my home network, it would falter. The Wi-Fi card would reset itself multiple times, leaving me disconnected until, by sheer luck, it would finally connect.

The issue seemed to occur whenever the internet became unstable or when Windows struggled to verify the internet connection. In those moments, the Wi-Fi card underwent a hardware reset, abruptly severing my network connection 😐.

Oh, the day I connected to a Wi-Fi network that had no internet access—only an internal network! Every 5 seconds, I would lose connection 🤦‍♂️.

I couldn’t tell if the problem stemmed from driver incompatibility with Windows or something else (I’d been grappling with this issue across various Windows versions for two years). But today, in the afternoon, I made a significant change using the following tool: I switched Windows’ Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) to Mozilla’s servers. And it seems the problem is entirely resolved.

Now, as soon as I connect to Wi-Fi, the signal bars fill up, and there’s no sign of disconnection anymore.

Of course, there are other solutions online to completely disable NCSI (the same mechanism Microsoft uses to detect your internet connection and display those warning icons ⚠️ on your network card). But for now, this seems to be working just fine.

I suspect the issue might have been related to Iran’s internet filtering and disruptions against Microsoft. Because right now, my connections to Mozilla addresses are working perfectly.

I haven’t tested this on a Wi-Fi network without internet access (WAN) yet, but I hope it won’t cause any more trouble there either.