Connectivity issues after boot, wake, VPN connection on Windows 11

Question

Every time I boot up my PC or wake it from hibernation, or connect to a VPN, my internet connection is down for a few minutes. This can range from 2 to 20 minutes, and I feel it has gotten worse over time, but I never measured it exactly. It does *not* struggle to connect to my network - the WiFi connection is immediately established and it says "Connected, secured". However, several apps cannot connect to the internet, Discord, Teams, Tidal, etc. won't start at all.

Chrome... weirdly works sometimes, other times it doesn't. I honestly haven't discovered a method to this madness. Sometimes even YouTube will work during this time, other times not even Google will load.

This also happens on every VPN connection, and while using the VPN, it will occasionally drop the connection and wait another few minutes before it resumes.

During this time, the "Service Host: Network Service" will spin up and sit at 5% - 10% CPU usage. In particular, it's the "DNS Client" (Dnscache) service. Stopping the service does nothing, it just starts back up. Neither the task manager nor my router show any network usage during that time.

It happens only on this machine (desktop PC, Win11, Intel CPU, Gigabyte AORUS motherboard), my private laptop, work laptop, and phone have no problems connecting, so I don't think it's my network. It happens on both my wifi network, as well as on a wired connection, so I don't think it's any particular network adapter. On a wired connection it says "Connected" immediately, and sometimes Chrome will work, but nothing else (same as on a wifi connection), but it will say "Identifying..." over the connection icon. After it's fully connected and all my apps work, it will show my router's name there.

I have tried reinstalling my ethernet and wifi adapters, I have tried ipconfig /flushdns and similar commands, nothing seems to work. Any ideas, before I try a full reinstall?

***moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Internet and connectivity****

Answer 1

Thanks for the tips Zunhui Han, however it turned out to be something else. I was using a custom hosts file to avoid spam and ads, and Idk what the *precise* problem was, but that was what slowed it down. Deleting it made everything start up faster after boot and wake again, and even makes my VPN usable. Whether there were some crucial hosts and services on there that made certain apps run into a timeout, or whether it was just so large, that it took ages to process individual requests, I don't know. Just leaving this here, in case it's relevant to someone else.

Answer 2

Hello,

Based on the information you provided, we suspect that your network card has turned on the power saving mode, which will disconnect the network connection when the computer is in sleep mode. We recommend that you refer to the following steps to troubleshoot:

1. Open the Device Manager
2. Find the network card device in the Device Manager, right-click and select "Properties". After opening the "Properties" window, select the "Power Management" tab, and uncheck the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" to turn off the power saving mode.

Best regards

Zunhui