My trusty old desktop is getting flaky. It's a Windows 7 box I built about six years ago. All of a sudden, the Wifi connection doesn't want to work. The same Wifi connection is blazing fast on my tablet, so I know it's the computer. And the flakiness is conditional, I see different speeds in different tests. I've seen anywhere from half a megabit down to about three megabits, but more of the former. I suspect it's a software issue with the winsock driver or the like. Maybe one too many automatic updates.

It thought it might be the router or modem. So I swapped out the modem and am now using it's internal router. And, as I said above, the other devices are loving it.

I tried deleting the Wifi card drivers and letting them reload. I tried updating the drivers. Nothing seems to work. The Wifi connection seems good (strong signal and the driver is saying it's getting good throughput.) But it just doesn't get out to the internet well.

Any ideas?

Flushed the windows sockets to revert them to factory settings?

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I would assume deleting and reinstalling would do that. It asked me for passwords that had been put in previously, so I assume if it got rid of them, it reverted everything.

One of the things I'd like is if there are some sort of diagnostics that would tell me where the problem is (haedware vs software, and maybe where in each stack.)

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Flushed the windows sockets to revert them to factory settings?

0-0

Try another adaptor.
I've had these go bad or has internal antenna issues.
If your other devices are fine then don't mess with your router/ap.

^
Yeah, I think that's the plan. I'll be near a Microcenter tomorrow. I'll run in and pick one up.

I'm just a bit surprised that if it is a hardware problem, that the adapter is just wounded, and not stone cold dead.

In case anyone is interested in the follow up, I replaced the Wifi NIC and that fixed the problem.

Thanks for the help.