Very slow wifi on PC, tablet super fast

[Johnnytheboy]

At my father's house who has long suffered from very slow internet at times. Have always assumed this was a geographical thing, but brought my tablet today and the internet is literally 50 times faster.

His PC is elderly but young enough to be Win 10, receives internet wirelessly from a router a good 20cm away. As far as I can tell, solutions are:

• update wireless card driver (though Windows assures me I don't need to)
• attach it to router with an ethernet cable (at a later date)

Anything else I haven't thought of?

What strikes me as odd is the cause of the internet speed being so widely variable, can't get my head round that. Sometimes it is fine, so if it is a local problem what causes the variance?

[AlexC1981]

If the wifi card is very old it will not be able to make use of fibre speeds.

Sticking a cable in seems like the best solution if it is only 20cm away!

[Johnnytheboy]

Downloaded a massive driver for the card which failed to install (got to a stage with a drop down menu of c. 8 options, all blank).

Next stage the ethernet cable.

Still mystified by the inconsistency of the slowness though.

[ulakye]

I had a similar problem with a PC a couple of years ago. Wi-fi worked fine anywhere is the house with a tablet or mobile phone but the PC was inconsistent. It was an old PC so lived with it. Then upgraded to a new PC and had the same problem. My router isn't that far away but it wasn't viable to connect via a cable. In the end I bought a cheap wi-fi extender and it fixed the problem. No idea why that would work but it did.

I still get the odd slow speed but if I unplug the wi-fi extender and then re-connect it everything starts working fine again.

[xeny]

Any chance the tablet is new so supports 5GHz Wifi which is generally uncongested while the older PC only does 2.4, and the slowness is when the neighbours are using Wfifi, or their Microwave oven?

[jimmyjimjim]

I had a network card go bad some years ago. Lots of errors in the windows logs, and replacing it fixed the issue. It ran like a complete dog until replaced.

You can pick up a usb to wifi dongle for little money, I'd try this first.

[The_Jackal]

Also download wifi analyser for your phone and check his wifi isnt set up on a really congested channel.
But honestly, if his pc is 20cm away from the router you should be using a cable. It will always be faster and more reliable than wifi. I wouldnt waste your time messing around with wifi to the pc.

[Johnnytheboy]

xeny said:

Any chance the tablet is new so supports 5GHz Wifi which is generally uncongested while the older PC only does 2.4, and the slowness is when the neighbours are using Wfifi, or their Microwave oven?

Possibly, tablet is <1 yr old.

[anonymous-user]

Blimey just plug a cable in. A few quid and ten seconds work and it will be as fast as it can be. Not sure why you'd even consider wifi on a static PC at all really, especially one sitting next to the router.

[Johnnytheboy]

JimSuperSix said:

Blimey just plug a cable in. A few quid and ten seconds work and it will be as fast as it can be. Not sure why you'd even consider wifi on a static PC at all really, especially one sitting next to the router.

Purely because (at time of posting) I was there with no chance of being there again with an ethernet cable for a fortnight, and wanted to know if it was likely to be some easy fix rather than waiting a fortnight.

[Starfighter]

Send him a cable via Amazon. It is a very simple connection and no configuration needed on the computer or router to work.

[Johnnytheboy]

Starfighter said:

Send him a cable via Amazon. It is a very simple connection and no configuration needed on the computer or router to work.

You've not dealt with my father (on an IT basis). He would probably set the PC on fire doing that.

Joking apart it can wait until I turn up in two weeks as it does work, it's just slow.

[CubanPete]

You could try changing the WiFi channel.

But for a quid, get a cable in! Hardwired is so much better.

[Johnnytheboy]

Starfighter said:

Send him a cable via Amazon. It is a very simple connection and no configuration needed on the computer or router to work.

Sorry just to add to that (I'm only slightly more tech savvy than my old man) do I need to 'tell' the PC to start using Ethernet rather than WiFi once I've plugged it in? It literally just gets on with it?

If the wifi signal is so bad wouldn't it be better to disable the WiFi connection?

[megaphone]

It would usually default to Ethernet. However turn off the WiFi on the PC anyway.