Wifi home network laptop problems or upgrade question

[lchris21]

Morning Peeps,

Been having a few home wifi woes over the last few weeks.

Have both a desktop and laptop, plus the missus tablet, smart phone etc all connected to the home wifi. The Sky router is located close to the main desktop which also connects to it with wifi. The router is away from any interfering objects etc. I have a couple of plug in TPlink wifi boosters dotted round the house to assist

Problem is my ageing laptop. Now its getting on a bit in computer terms and coming up to her 6th Birthday. I did a clean install of Windows 7 Home premium earlier this when having a major clear-out. I updated all the drivers etc and it was working great and has been for 10 or so months. Just recently the wifi connection on the laptop had been becoming increasingly unstable, dropping out, and generally slowwwwww......

I've run some maintenance. malware, anti virus, spybot etc and all is clean and shiny inside. I've updated the drivers for the network card again yesterday but still it limps along........

As a comparison, I've got the laptop and desktop together here and now both connected wifi'ly running the same speed tester. The desktop averages 25-30Mb (good for me) whilst the laptop is averaging 2-3Mb ??? Signal strength is good to excellent on laptop when used in other parts of the house.
If I plug the laptop, desktop or both at the same time directly into the router with the Ethernet cable is shoots up to the 30-35Mb range..............

Question is, is my network card fried??? Is it worth upgrading it?? Or is it another few hours of my life I'll never get back googling in hope

Thanks

 

[Wendelspanswick]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/tp-link-t...7l_KhM4g5BeHFcN9k9RHlNhD3bZiq2rxoCCB3w_wcBwcB
It's only a tenner but you can pick them up for £2!

 

[lchris21]

Looks good??? Worth it for a few quid if it'll stop my missus bugging me about this computer wifif stuff!!! I'm hoping it will be a plug and play job and will it just override the internal network card or will I have to punch a few keys along with the screen when it goes pear shaped.............

 

[daleyd]

Similar to above - I got one of these for use on a raspberry pi, worked out of the box no probs.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00EZOQFHO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

 

[gaz1]

ive got a laptop and wifi card no longer works within it all i did was just buy a usb wifi dongle

I have the laptop but i hardly use it anyway i prefer the base unit and directly wired system

 

[Paul99]

It's very likely that the wifi card itself is fine but the antenna wires are run around the screen (under the bezel) and of course through the hinge area - constant opening and closing causes the wires to snap which causes the exact symptoms you describe (i.e. very poor signal and random dropping of the wifi connection) rather than complete failure. You wil be able to get replacement antennas which simply clip onto the wifi card but it's a PITA splitting the laptop, removing the bezel and re-route the antenna etc. The slimline USB wifi adapter will save a lot of hassle and should be plug and play - disabling the current wifi card in device manager is perhaps all you'll need to do - windows should automatically install the correct drivers etc.

 

[MoreWellie]

quite often there is a slide switch on the edge of the laptop which switches the internal wifi off altogether

 

[lchris21]

cheers all, have ordered the TP Link dooda suggested by Wendel............

 

[blenkie1]

Morning Peeps,

Been having a few home wifi woes over the last few weeks.

Have both a desktop and laptop, plus the missus tablet, smart phone etc all connected to the home wifi. The Sky router is located close to the main desktop which also connects to it with wifi. The router is away from any interfering objects etc. I have a couple of plug in TPlink wifi boosters dotted round the house to assist

Problem is my ageing laptop. Now its getting on a bit in computer terms and coming up to her 6th Birthday. I did a clean install of Windows 7 Home premium earlier this when having a major clear-out. I updated all the drivers etc and it was working great and has been for 10 or so months. Just recently the wifi connection on the laptop had been becoming increasingly unstable, dropping out, and generally slowwwwww......

I've run some maintenance. malware, anti virus, spybot etc and all is clean and shiny inside. I've updated the drivers for the network card again yesterday but still it limps along........

As a comparison, I've got the laptop and desktop together here and now both connected wifi'ly running the same speed tester. The desktop averages 25-30Mb (good for me) whilst the laptop is averaging 2-3Mb ??? Signal strength is good to excellent on laptop when used in other parts of the house.
If I plug the laptop, desktop or both at the same time directly into the router with the Ethernet cable is shoots up to the 30-35Mb range..............

Question is, is my network card fried??? Is it worth upgrading it?? Or is it another few hours of my life I'll never get back googling in hope

Thanks

6 years? Thats a baby. My laptop that I use everyday is getting on for 12 years old and was second hand when I got it. Cannot run Flash and stuff but runs word, excel and can look at most stuff on the internet.

 

[Shox Dr]

IBM R51 circa 2002.

 

[lchris21]

just a bit of an update in case anyone reads this for future ref..??

I got hold of a couple of the dongles recommended and got them working. It boosted the speed by a couple of Mb......

I also did a bit more googling and changed the channel on my router which helped a bit as well. So all in all from the measly 2-3Mb average I'm now flying at 6-8Mb average...................or so I thought.

Out of curiosity, I unplugged the wifi extender I was recommended to buy a few months back when I was initially having issues, to see what, if anything they were doing????? Anyway to cut a long story short..........the laptop can quite happily

reach 20Mb in most areas of the house now !!!! ..................don't know why, don't know how, don't want to bamboozle myself anymore.......I'm quitting while I'm ahead .................technology eh??? Gimme a set of spanners and a hammer any day

 

[daleyd]

I think, and I don't actually own one so I'm only going off what I read somewhere so don't put 100% trust in this, that some wifi extenders cut your bandwidth down to achieve the extra range.

 

[Shox Dr]

I think, and I don't actually own one so I'm only going off what I read somewhere so don't put 100% trust in this, that some wifi extenders cut your bandwidth down to achieve the extra range.

I've heard this as well. it's because of increased comms between repeater and main unit. causing overheads.

I had poor coverage within our house, Bought 2 TP-link Mini Pocket Routers. (Model# TL-WR710N) 25quid each. One upstairs one down.(Main router is on my W/shop) we can now walk anywhere in the house and not lose connection.

 

[bump]

It's addional contention between the booster and the base station.

 

[gaz1]

I also did a bit more googling and changed the channel on my router which helped a bit as well. So all in all from the measly 2-3Mb average I'm now flying at 6-8Mb average...................or so I thought.

Out of curiosity, I unplugged the wifi extender I was recommended to buy a few months back when I was initially having issues, to see what, if anything they were doing????? Anyway to cut a long story short..........the laptop can quite happily

reach 20Mb in most areas of the house now !!!! ..................don't know why, don't know how, don't want to bamboozle myself anymore.......I'm quitting while I'm ahead .................technology eh??? Gimme a set of spanners and a hammer any day

the answer is within your post

i bet because most just plug in and play dont check others around them that could just do the same as everyone else

changing its bandwidth and also changing its channel improved your signal therefore your not competing over the same space of frequency therefore now your at full bandwidth with not much drop outs to deal with