Fix Wi-Fi Disconnecting on Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (Power Management Issue)

After my microSD card failed and I installed a fresh OS, I ran into a frustrating Wi-Fi disconnection issue. Here is the fix for anyone dealing with the same problem.

Symptoms

Here is what I was experiencing:

Wi-Fi router showed no connection (not even in the DHCP list)

The green LED on the Raspberry Pi appeared normal

Wi-Fi worked briefly right after boot, allowing SSH access, then dropped

Root Cause

The wireless adapter’s power management setting was the culprit.

Like Windows’ Fast Startup, these “helpful” power-saving features can cause real headaches.

Run iwconfig wlan0 and if you see Power Management:on, this is very likely your issue.

shichinomiya@raspberrypizero2:~ $ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"xxxxxxxxxxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.447 GHz Access Point: 11:45:14:19:19:YJ
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-28 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:18 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Disabling Power Management

Simple enough — just disable it:

iwconfig wlan0 power off

Problem solved, right? Not so fast — this setting reverts on every reboot. So we need to make it persistent.

Making It Permanent with systemd

We will use systemd to run the command automatically at boot. (Apparently this is now preferred over rc.local and cron.)

Create a unit file:

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/disable-wlan0-power.service

Add the contents to run iwconfig wlan0 power off after every boot.

Then reload systemd and enable the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable disable-wlan0-power.service

Verify it is active:

shichinomiya@raspberrypizero2:~ $ sudo systemctl status disable-wlan0-power.service
 disable-wlan0-power.service - Disable power management on wlan0
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/disable-wlan0-power.service; enabled; >
Active: active (exited) since Tue 2025-02-25 22:27:47 JST; 1h 15min ago
Process: 452 ExecStart=/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 power off (code=exited, status=>
Main PID: 452 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CPU: 8ms

Feb 25 22:27:47 raspberrypizero2 systemd[1]: Starting disable-wlan0-power.servi>
Feb 25 22:27:47 raspberrypizero2 systemd[1]: Finished disable-wlan0-power.servi>

Reboot to confirm:

sudo reboot now

After reboot, check the service status:

sudo systemctl status disable-wlan0-power.service

And verify with iwconfig:

Run iwconfig wlan0 and confirm Power Management:off appears.

shichinomiya@raspberrypizero2:~ $ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"xxxxxxxxxxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.447 GHz Access Point: 11:45:14:19:19:YJ
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-28 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:18 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this resolved your issue. It certainly fixed mine.

I do not recall ever needing this workaround on older OS versions, so this power management behavior may have been introduced in a recent release.

Either way, it is frustrating that such an intrusive feature cannot be permanently disabled through normal configuration.

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