Hi all, I just recently moved into a new house. We set our computers up side-by-side, literally 4 feet apart, and my computer has excellent (enough) Wi-Fi speeds and signal strength. Hers is pitiful. I’ve replaced the ISP router with my own ASUS router, connection is stronger but actual speeds are still crazy slow for hers. I’ve removed and replaced the antennae on her motherboard. I’ve reset network adaptors, disabled and re-enabled drivers, flushed all wi-fi and internet settings via command prompt. I’m so confused because she has strong connection to the router, but around 10 mbps download speeds or less. For reference, my computer gets 400 mpbs routinely.
I’m just at a loss. Is this related to her motherboard hardware? The router? The position of her computer? (It’s only 4ft from mine!!!) Anybody else dealt with something like this and saw it resolved? I’m thinking our only fix before I run ethernet up here is a new pcie network card.
EDIT: Just ran speed tests, both computers have “strong” signal to the router.
Her computer got .60 mbps up, 1.3 down.
Mine got 200 up, 190 down.
UPDATE: Tried all the suggestions in the comments, swapping my network card into her rig corrected the problem. So I’ve narrowed it down to the network adaptor in her motherboard. She says she didn’t remove the antennae during the move she they may have gotten damaged.
Haven’t used Windows in a while but it could be configuration software related.
Some tryouts
- Try using a bootable ‘clean’ windows or Linux version to compare.
- Make sure network isn’t limited by metered data
- Try different wifi bands. Some cards don’t work well with ranges of frequency bands.
- Hardware compare your network card to hers on a comparison website
- google her network card to find out restrictions on network
It looks as if your wifi routers is just fine. Its as if communication back and forth is not great enough hence my tryout options.
Good luck!
She’s gonna be pissed if I wipe any of her data, unfortunately l, she’s not big on reorganizing the computer haha, I’ll try your other suggestions before a clean wipe.
(Yes I know we can back up, use a different boot drive, etc, she’s finicky, it took me years to get her to move her data from her ancient laptop to this desktop)
You could run a bootable Linux USB stick and test the internet from there. Then you could determine if the issue is software or hardware related. Live USB sticks require no installation and run separately from your installed OS on your internal storage. I.e., it wouldn’t mess up her files at all.
Ok, good point. I’ll give her a shot, I think I have mint kicking around on an SD card, it’ll be fun lol
OP, make sure you come back and tell us what the problem was.
Are they both desktop computers? Are they both connected to the 5ghz band?
Yes both are desktop computers, both on 5ghz band
Shot in the dark, but any driver updates for the network adapter? You should be able to find them on the manufacturers site under a driver download section. You just mentioned disable/re enabling the device, an update might be worth a shot if there is one too.
If you have an external wifi card on your PC, could try to plug it into hers and see if she gets good speeds then. Would tell you if its just something with her built in wifi adapter
Drivers are all updated, yes
I’ll try moving my pcie network card into hers and see what happens l!
copy a large file between the two PCs over the wireless network. what is that performance like?
assuming that the router is not traffic shaping her connection based on MAC or IP, then install wireshark and take a look at the packet trace for retransmissions or other issues.
Wireshark, will do!
Sounds like you’ve tried everything. I would have given up and went with either cable or an USB Wi-Fi card. When reinstalling drivers, did you let windows choose the optimal driver or did you download them from the motherboard manufacturer? I would look at downloading the latest driver from the mobo manufacturer, and if that doesn’t work I’d work down the list of older versions. Maybe even going through older bios revisions. Is there any warranty left, and can you find any forum posts regarding the mobo and wifi issues?
Also, have you looked through the bios settings? I can’t suggest anything in particular to look for, but a reset of the settings wouldn’t hurt.
I will try different drivers and report back, I let Windows choose the driver. I haven’t gone through bios yet, but I can do that. I’m pretty confident it’s hardware that just got damaged in the move somehow but I’m willing to waste my time looking for a free solution!!
