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Bought a refurb PC, fitted a TP Link WiFi PCIe card with two antenna on the back. It's sat under a desk in the corner of the house. Problem is, the internet connection keeps dropping. Ok, so I downloaded WiFi analyser from the Windows Store which is a cracking utility, and it shows the signal strength. It's not great, and it goes up and down, but now for the weird part:
1) The internet connectivity is unrelated to the WiFi signal strength. It drops when the signal is still ok.
2) This MacBook is reporting a similar signal strength (reported as RSSI) of -68dBm vs -71 dBm for the PC, however it never drops out.
3) No other devices drop out like this.
If it's not in the WiFi layer and it's not the WAN then what else could it be? Any Windows experts able to tell me where I can look for clues?
When it drops out, the little yellow triangle appears (which I assume means it can ping some reference site) however after it goes away the web is unusable for much longer via a browser.
Also, tracert shows it cannot even find the router for the first hop so it's clearly not WAN related.
Intermittent driver issue happening when the system is doing something which conflicts?
Update drivers (if possible) and/or try a different adapter and/or troubleshoot the other bit of kit causing the conflict?
Or buy a(nother) Mac 😉
Do you use a dual band router?
Some devices get confused by dual band it’s best to separate them into different networks.
Or buy a(nother) Mac
Get me an i5/8Gb for £150 and re-train my wife and that sounds like a great plan!
Dual band router yes, but it's got a separate SSID for 5GHz.
Intermittent driver issue - perhaps, but there's nothing in the logs. However I will try disabling the ethernet port. There are a few virtual adapters in the list, not sure why as there's no virtualisation or anything installed - it's a fresh install apart from Office and Krita.
I'd be looking at drivers too, chipset mainboard as well as the card itself. Assuming Intel-based, there's a 'detect my system' affair on Intel's website. It's a flaky piece of shit but it's worth a punt in the first instance. Check the system manufacturer's website for driver and BIOS updates too.
Long shot but, try disabling any power-saving on the card.
Long shot but, try disabling any power-saving on the card.
Which is the issue we were having with a couple of TP-Link devices. Had to use their own utility software to turn power save off but is sorted it in the end.
Checked again and it was just really really slow, like 100kbps. Despite other devices being fine.
Suspecting some kind of internal interference, I moved it to a different slot, and now it seems fine, at least so far.... hmm...