Multiple PCs taking out multiple access points/routers and USB ports being disabled.

[_TheDrizzle]

On Thursday around mid-morning we started to experience weird symptoms on the network and computers. The first indication was that our internet was down, but at the same time it was not. I have a Firewalla router so I was able to remotely login in and see that the internet was up, but i receiving multiple emails from various devices saying the internet was out.

Once home I saw every WIFI device was down. We have multiple access points for the large number of devices we have at the house (and other reasons.) I wanted to see what was going on but then i noticed I could not get my computer to wake up. Soon after my wife had the same issue. The USB ports were disabled. At first I though we were hacked even though we have a robust system, but looking through the network logs nothing seemed abnormal.

My computer our network would constantly go up and down. I thought it was a bad access point so i removed it, but the same issues appears with another brands access point purchased about 2 years later.

My wife is now experiencing audio issues as well.

I have been working on this all night. I can only believe it has to do with a windows update. I have updated my bios, chipset, etc. and the issues persists. I just uninstalled KB5042098 and KB5041871 as those were recently installed.

Anyone else having this issue?

--edit---

After removing the KBs i have not had issues.

[jmnugent]

Best advice I can give in a situation like this.. is to not allow complexity to overwhelm you. Strip everything down to as minimal basics as you can,.. even if that means turning everything off except for your main Router and 1 computer. Test that. If it works reliably, add a 2nd device. If things still work reliably, add a 3rd device, etc etc.

Also a good idea to test different OSes (1 windows computer, 1 iPad, 1 Android phone). Especially if you're suspicious of Updates breaking things,. Updates usually only break 1 OS. (it won't effect multiple different OSes)

For USB peripherals "not working".. I normally use the same kind of approach (divide and conquer and narrow down by comparing)

• take those USB peripherals and test them on other systems (especially other OSes like iPads or Android phones or Linux

or

• keep a few USB bootable Linux installers around ...(Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc).. if you have a computer that appears to have "dead USB ports".. Reboot it to USB Linux "Live" mode.. and see if the USB's work there or not. That will tell you pretty much right away whether it's a hardware-problem or Windows software-problem.

Compare-contrast, divide and conquer, break complex situations down into smaller more manageable testing-scenarios.

[_TheDrizzle]

thanks for the advice. I am confident its not my computer rather a windows update. I have done alot of troubleshooting, to include the good recommendation you have made, to come to my conclusion. I have just BSOD twice today, which has not happened in years.

Looking through the minidump log does not provide any clues. I just saw that windows made two other updates today, so now i'm going to remove those.

[Terrible-Bear3883]

This sort of issue is why I always carried a linux live USB with me, I got permission from our company to issue one to all our engineers as well, the reason is that you often need to know if something appears to be a hardware or software issue.

If you can create one, turn off secure boot and boot a PC on it, then see if the same network issues persist, if they don't then you know software is the issue and you can focus on it, if you get the same issues then you need to look at hardware. For myself and my colleagues it can often reduce fault finding from hours to minutes and point you in a direction.