It is not always easy, as the Wi-Fi icon may not appear or you may have a system problem. In those cases, what you can do is go to the command line. It is very easy and you will only have to follow a series of steps and you will be able to solve problems that may appear.
What to do to disable Wi-Fi in Windows
If you need to turn off Windows Wi-Fi at any time, you will be able to use different options. It may be necessary if you have a problem, you have detected that the network is working unstable or simply if you are going to connect by cable and you do not want to have it on. To do this you will be able to go to the taskbar, to the System Configuration or to the Windows Control Panel.
Taskbar
The most common, simple and quick option is to go to the windows taskbar, at the bottom next to the clock. There you will see the Wi-Fi icon if it is connected. It will also inform you of the network you have connected to, as well as whether or not you have Internet access. It is used to, at a quick glance, detect possible problems.
But what we are looking for is to disconnect the Wi-Fi network. What you should do is click on the icon and you will see that a small box is displayed where you will see the name of the Wi-Fi network at the top. You just have to click on the Wi-Fi icon again (it is marked with dark blue) and you will see that it is automatically unchecked. In this way you will have disabled Wi-Fi in Windows.
System configuration
You also have the alternative of going to System Settings and from there enable or disable Wi-Fi in Windows. It’s very easy and fast. You have to go to Start, enter Settings and go to Network and Internet. Once there, you will see a tab to enable or disable the wireless network. It is as simple as checking or unchecking it.
When it is enabled it will say “Activated”. To disable it, you just have to press once and it will appear in “Disabled”. It is a process that is done automatically.
control Panel
A third option is to go to the Control Panel. There you will also be able to enable or disable Wi-Fi quickly and easily in Windows. To do this you have to go to Start, look for Control Panel and go to Networks and Internet. There click on Network and Sharing Center, Change adapter settings and select the one that interests you. You have to click with the right mouse button and you give it to connect or disconnect.
You can also give it directly to Deactivate. From there, you can also see the connection properties, such as changing the DNS or configuring different network protocols.
Disable Wi-Fi in Windows from Command Prompt
We can take into account several points so that the wireless network works well in case failures appear. For example, we can restart the router and equipment, scan for threats, update systems… But sometimes it is necessary to disable Wi-Fi.
We have the option of doing it through the Windows 10 menu and settings, which is the operating system most used by desktop computer users. But sometimes this is not possible for different reasons. It may be that the function is not enabled, that we have some malware that prevents us, or that we simply want to opt for an alternative.
That alternative is the command line. Windows has the built-in tool Netsh. It is a utility that allows us to manage the network, carry out configurations and be able to detect and solve possible problems that appear at any given time. One of those options is to disable Wi-Fi, which is what we are going to explain.
Access Command Prompt
The first step we must take is to access the Symbol of the system. To do this you have to go to Start, type Command Prompt and open it with administrator permissions. This is important to be able to execute certain commands.
Once opened, it is necessary to know the Wi-Fi interface name that we want to disable. It would be the network to which we do not want to connect or we want to deactivate to reactivate later and thus solve certain problems that may have occurred. If we know the name, we simply write it down or take it into account to write it later.
In case we do not know at that moment what the name of the network interface is, we must execute the command netsh wlan show interfaces. It will show us a series of data, such as the MAC address, the network to which we are connected, the type of encryption… And we will also see Name. It is the first option that appears.
As we see in the image, the normal thing is that the name of the interface is Wi-Fi. That is exactly what we need for the next step.
We have to run the command netsh interface set interface name=”Network-name” admin=DISABLED
Here you have to change “Network-name” for the name of the interface, which in our case is Wi-Fi. It would look like this: netsh interface set interface name=”Wi-Fi” admin=DISABLED
In this way the Wi-Fi network will be disabled. It will take a few seconds and we will see that the Wi-Fi icon on the taskbar automatically shows us that it is not available. If we click on it we will see that no networks appear and that, if we are connected wirelessly, we have run out of Internet connection.
Re-enable Wi-Fi
Now we have already disabled the Wi-Fi interface. Therefore the next step would be to enable it again. In this case we do not have to change much compared to what we have done before. We would have to execute a similar command, where we only change ENABLED to DISABLED. Therefore, it would look like this: netsh interface set interface name=”Network-name” admin=ENABLED.
In our case, where the interface name is Wi-Fi, the command would be netsh interface set interface name=”Wi-Fi” admin=ENABLED.
As we see in the image, once we execute one or the other command, nothing else appears. You just have to wait a few seconds for it to run (in the case of enabling the network it takes a little longer) and that’s it.
Therefore, by following these simple steps we can enable or disable Wi-Fi in Windows 10 from the command line. We do not have to install anything additional, just know what the name of the network interface is and execute it as we have shown.
Disconnect Wi-Fi on the command line
We have explained how to disable Wi-Fi completely. This means that we will not be able to connect to any network, unless we re-enable it again. But, what if we want to disconnect a specific network? We can also do it from the command line.
We go back to Start again and open the Command Prompt and this time we execute netsh wlan disconnect. In this way, what we do is turn off Wi-Fi. We will automatically disconnect from the network, in case we were inside.
We can also connect to a specific network. We would have to execute the command netsh wlan connect=”network-name”. You simply have to change “network-name” to the name of that particular network. So you can connect in case the Wi-Fi icon does not appear or you have any problem. You will only need to go to the command line and run it.
Commands to control Wi-Fi in Windows
If you want to control the Wi-Fi in your Windows, one option is to use the command line to learn different aspects related to the wireless network. This will help you detect possible problems, see aspects such as ping, detect outages, etc. You will see that they are very simple and you can do it at any time.
There are a number of basic commands What should we know in this regard? We are going to show what the main ones are and what they are for.
tracert
The first command we want to show is the command tracert. It is used to trace the path of packets that are sent through the network. We can test connectivity problems, something that may be present when we talk about Wi-Fi. In case of any failure, it tells us.
The command is as simple as: tracert + website. For example it would be tracert www.redeszone.net
ipconfig
Another very popular command for Windows in everything related to networks is ipconfig. It is also used to test network connectivity problems. It shows us possible failures in TCP/IP. It provides us with detailed information about the IPv4 address, WLAN or Ethernet adapter.
The command to run is ipconfig/all. A long list of information will appear.
ping
The command ping it is also widely used. In this case it is used to test network connectivity. The ping command sends a data packet to a specific domain name or destination IP address over the network and checks to see if it receives a correct response from the destination address. In addition, it estimates the approximate round-trip time that data packets take to travel to the destination address and return.
We have to write ping and the name of the server that we want to test. For example ping www.redeszone.net
getmac
This command, as its name in English indicates, allows to know the MAC address of a team. We may need this address to configure some equipment connected to the network, for example.
We simply have to use the Windows 10 command line and run Getmac. It will show us the addresses of the devices connected to this computer.
NETSH
with the command NETSH we have a utility that we can use to display the network settings for each of the adapters. We can see the configuration of the Wi-Fi adapter and modify it, if necessary.
We have to run netsh/?
netstat
netstat is a network utility command used to display the statistics of a network and the protocol. Lists information about the TCP/UDP endpoints, the routing table, and the network interface. It shows all the active TCP/UDP connections on a computer and helps us to know in which port address the tasks are open.
We have to write netstat/? In Command Prompt.
Pathping
One last command from the list we show for Windows is Pathping. In this case it is used to solve network connectivity problems. This command is similar to Tracert in function, but with more detailed information about the path of the data packet.
The command is pathping + website. For example pathping www.redeszone.net
Therefore, as you have seen, you have at your disposal some useful commands that you can use in Windows to manage the network. You will be able to detect problems and solve certain failures that may appear when browsing the net or connecting to a Wi-Fi network.
