FixIntelWifiLagSpikes.ps1

A simple powershell script to fix lag spikes of Intel Wireless cards of the "Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC" series. This script modifies the Windows Registry to change the cards behavior.

These lag spikes lead to periodical (say all 4 to 6 minutes) interruptions of a few seconds in video calls or online games.

Usage:

1. Run RunFix.cmd or RunFix.ps1. Both files are a wrapper to run FixIntelWifiLagSpikes.ps1 as Administrator (necessary for adding keys to the Windows Registry).

2. If run successfully, you'll need to reboot your system for the changes to take effect.

Insights:

This scripts looks in the Registry under the path HKLM:\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318} for any Intel Wireless NIC (based on vendor (Intel) and NetType (WLAN) of the NIC) and adds five registry keys:

• "ScanDisableOnHighOrMulticast" as DWORD with the value 1
• "ScanDisableOnLowLatencyOrQos" as DWORD with the value 1
• "ScanDisableOnLowTraffic" as DWORD with the value 1
• "ScanDisableOnMediumTraffic" as DWORD with the value 1
• "ScanWhenAssociated" as DWORD with the value 0

You can test for lag spikes by opening a command / powershell and ping your router or any other site:

ping -t 192.168.1.1

The output should look similar to this:

PS C:\Users\jmeyer> ping -t www.heise.de

Pinging www.heise.de [2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85] with 32 bytes of data:
[..]
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=11ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=11ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=182ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=154ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=36ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=11ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=149ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=11ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=12ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=12ms
Reply from 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85: time=12ms
[..]

Ping statistics for 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85:
    Packets: Sent = 384, Received = 384, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 182ms, Average = 12ms
Control-C

Before applying the fix, you'll see a recurring pattern of a bunch of pings with a high round-trip time of several hundred ms as shown in the example above.

Apparently, Intel wireless cards cannot scan for new networks while maintaining a consistent low latency stream for the established connection.

Tested on:

Tested on Windows 10 21H1 with an Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 (Asus PCE-AC56).

These Windows Registry keys should also work on the following Intel Wireless chipsets (tested):

• Intel (R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265
• Intel (R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265
• Intel (R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
• Intel (R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165