If you’re experiencing a problem with your Wi-Fi connection on Windows, it can sometimes be hard to diagnose the root cause without detailed information. Luckily, Windows has a Wi-Fi report that you can use to get to the bottom of most connectivity issues.

So what is the Wi-Fi report, and how do you generate and analyze it? Here’s what you need to know.

What Is a Windows Wi-Fi Report?

The Wi-Fi or Wlan report is an HTML document that provides detailed information about Wi-Fi events on your Windows computer. This includes the networks you’ve connected to, the duration of each session, and any errors you experienced. Also included in the WLAN report, are the network adapters on your machine.

The report provides a historical view of your Wi-Fi sessions over three days, and allows you to zero in on each one to find out what caused the problems you’re experiencing.

Before you generate the Wi-Fi report, please check out our guides on how to fix Windows 10 can’t detect Wi-Fi, and how to fix Wi-Fi issues on Windows 11.

How to Create a Wi-Fi Report on Windows

To generate the Wi-Fi report, start by opening Command Prompt. Press Win + S to open Windows Search and type cmd in the search box. When Command Prompt shows up in the search results, click Run as administrator.

command crompt in the search results of windows 11.

Click Yes on the UAC prompt. In Command Prompt, type in the below command and hit the Enter key to run it:

        netsh wlan show wlanreport
    

Windows will then generate the Wi-Fi report and save it somewhere on your computer. On our PC, Windows saved the report in the below location:

        C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WlanReport\wlan-report-latest.html
    

You can get to the Wi-Fi report through File Explorer, and then double-click to open it.

the location of the wlan report on windows 11

You can view the report in your favorite browser.

How to Analyze the Windows Wi-Fi Report

The first thing you’ll see at the top of the Wlan report is the Wi-Fi summary chart.

wi-fi summary chart on windows

You’ll see green bars in the graph, and these represent a session and its length (they're arranged from the oldest session to the newest). When you hover over these green sections, you’ll get a summary of the session in the bottom left part of the Wi-Fi summary chart.

In the Wi-Fi summary chart, you’ll also see different-colored circular icons with letters in them. These represent Wi-Fi events that happened during a particular session. When you click on these icons, you’ll be taken to the part of the report that contains more information about the event.

When diagnosing problems during a session, look for red circular icons with an “X” in them, as that donates an error.

You can find a legend in the bottom right part of the Wi-Fi summary chart that tells you the meaning of each icon.

Below the Wi-Fi summary chart is a couple of sections with more information on them. Let’s briefly discuss the sections you’ll most likely look at to get the information you need — some other sections, like Report Info, General System Info, and User Info, are pretty easy to grasp:

  • Network Adapters: This section contains information about both your physical and virtual wireless network adapters. This also includes any hidden adapters on your PC.
  • Summary: This section contains brief information about the Wi-Fi sessions you’ve launched on your computer. You can see connection successes and failures, the reasons for disconnections, and the duration of each session.
    summary section of the wlan report on windows
  • Wireless Sessions: Here’s where the action is, as this is where you can find comprehensive details of each session. This includes the adapter you used, how you connected to the adapter (manual or automatic), the name of the Wi-Fi connection you used, and how long the session lasted. You can also see the events of each session, including the time they happened, and the message associated with them – click [+] on the left side of each message to see the full details.
    session summary on the wlan report on windows

Know How Your Wi-Fi Is Doing on Windows

Whenever you need more information about a connection problem, you can bring up the Wi-Fi report and use it to help you resolve the issue. While the report might seem daunting to analyze at first, we hope our guide has demystified it enough so you can effectively take advantage of it.