Possible fix for wifi networks not showing up/not connecting in Windows 10 - Disable Hybrid Shutdown
Channel: Jerry Travis Smith
Date: 2023-06-22

The wifi networks on my laptop would sometimes not show up at all when I would open the lid to start using it. And sometimes, they would show up, but then they wouldn't connect and I would get an error that would say "This connection has changed. Please re-enter your password," to which I would. It still wouldn't work, even though I was sure the password was correct.

After trying many things, I discovered that I no longer had this issue if I disabled Hybrid Shutdown in Windows 10. Hybrid Shutdown is meant to speed up the boot process by loading most of the previous memory state from disk instead of loading individual boot files off the disk. Essentially, if you had some bad information in RAM when your machine was shut down or put to sleep, that bad information would be put right back into place during the hybrid boot. One reason a true reboot of a computer has fixed things for decades is that sometimes, it's good to remove the power from RAM and let whatever junk was in there go away forever. Then, when you reboot, the RAM is loaded fresh with your operating system from disk.

I have no idea why disabling Hybrid Shutdown fixed my Wifi issues, but hopefully this helps some other people too.