RT-AC66U - Wireless disconnects consistently when accessing network shared drive

[njweb]

I have an RT-AC66U that was rock solid with the now infamous 354 firmware (FW_RT_AC66U_3004354) which was pulled from Asus' site.

Seeing a lot of features were added and fixed in recent firmware revisions, as well as fixes for vulnerability issues, I finally updated my firmware about 3 or 4 days ago.

Issue
Now, with both of the last two firmware versions - beta FW_RT_AC66U_30043742239 and FW_RT_AC66U_30043742050 (which note having addressed httpd [i.e. web server] vulnerability issues), the router typically works fine for wifi access until I start accessing the network share.

Windows Explorer then starts hanging saying the share is not available (which is not uncommon and must be a Windows issue with Homegroup and / or standard network shares between Windows 7 and 8 machines) and shortly thereafter (within a minute) I get disconnected from wifi and it does NOT reconnect automatically.

With the 354 firmware, it would also have trouble accessing the share (as if something had gone to sleep), but I would not lose wifi access.


The machine on which I am wirelessly connected (5G) to the network is Windows 8.1 64 bit.
The machine on which the shared drive is located is on Windows 7 32 bit.

Any ideas on which Homegroup or sharing settings I can play with or which (new) settings on the AC66U can check to attempt to resolve the wifi disconnect issues?

Thanks!

 

[njweb]

Solution:
I ended up "leaving" the homegroup and joining again as a tentative fix.

Since doing so everything is fine now:

Experience since applying the fix:
I am able to attach files from the shared drive to an e-mail (exact scenario that was CONSISTENTLY causing the disconnects within a few seconds previously).
I have been connected for a few hours without incident.

Cause:
So it was some bizarre sharing issue that resulted in disconnects when attempting to (re)connect to a shared drive (to attach a file to an e-mail).