Fix: WiFi Disappears After Reboot on Windows 11 (Dell Laptops)

Recently, I encountered a rather perplexing issue on a Dell Latitude 5440 running Windows 11. The problem was erratic: after a system restart, the wireless network would frequently stop working.

I tried the standard troubleshooting steps. I uninstalled and reinstalled the wireless network driver. After reinstalling the driver, the WiFi would work temporarily. After the first reboot, sometimes the WiFi would work. Other times, it wouldn’t connect at all. However, one thing was consistent: by the second reboot, the WiFi was guaranteed to be dead.

Following the usual tutorials for a “clean” driver reinstall didn’t resolve the issue. This suggested the problem wasn’t with the driver files themselves, but with how Windows was trying to load them.

🛠️ The Diagnosis

After digging deeper, I checked the WLAN AutoConfig service. Here is what I found:

• Startup Type: Automatic (correct)
• Service Status: Stopped (incorrect)

This was the smoking gun. Despite being set to start automatically during boot, the service was failing to launch. When I manually started the service, the WiFi miraculously began working again.

The Root Cause: The WLAN AutoConfig service was failing to start automatically during the Windows boot process.

🚫 Why Standard Fixes Didn’t Work

I tried several common solutions found online, such as:

• Disabling “Fast Startup” in the BIOS/Power Options.
• Modifying the service’s “Recovery” policies.

Unfortunately, none of these methods fixed the underlying auto-start failure.

💡 The Solution: A Batch Script

Since the service couldn’t start automatically, I needed a reliable way to start it manually. I decided to write a simple batch script to force the service to run.

Here is the code I generated. You can save this as a .bat file to fix the issue immediately.

The Fix Script

(Save the following code as start_wlan_service.bat)

@echo off
echo ==========================================
echo   Forcing WLAN AutoConfig Service Start...
echo ==========================================

:: Set the service to Automatic Startup
sc config WlanSvc start= auto

:: Force Start the Service
net start WlanSvc

echo.
echo ==========================================
echo   Service Status Check Complete.
echo ==========================================
pause

How to Use It:

1. Copy the code above into a new text document.
2. Save the file with the name start_wlan_service.bat.
   • Note: Ensure the encoding is correct for your system, or simply save as ANSI/UTF-8 without BOM in most editors.
3. Right-click on the saved .bat file.
4. Select “Run as administrator”.

Result: This script forces the service to start and sets it to automatic. It worked perfectly for me.