I have a Dell Inspiron laptop that I use in two houses and always use it in a wireless capacity. The first house has Virgin Media internet and I can go anywhere in the house and have a great connection. The second house has the Post Office internet and that's where I'm having some issues.
If my laptop is next to the router I have an excellent connection. If my laptop goes further than a few meters away from the router, the signal strength goes to fair and I can barely open a web page.
Now my first thought was it's the router or the channel it's set to needs changing but here's the thing. Every other wireless device in the house works perfectly at any distance from the router. We also have another Dell Inspiron, exactly the same specs and that works perfectly around the house.
So now I'm clueless on what's causing my laptop to have such poor signal strength in this house. I've never had an issue with the internet on the laptop side, it's always been a router issue. Not really sure what the next step to take is to fixing this problem..
Hrmm this is a weird issue and you pretty much covered where I was going to start with. Have you tried power cycling router and modem? Also update wireless card drivers?
@GTFShadow: I had to look up what power cycling is but yeah I have done that a few times while being here today. The connection is erratic, going to very good and then dropping to fair/poor.
Haven't updated drivers yet. As far as I know they're up to date and because the laptop works in other situations perfectly fine, I didn't want to mess with it. (Will probably end up doing this)
I have been wondering about one thing. Dell and windows have their own separate utilities for controlling what network I connect to. Apparently it was supposed to just be for XP but it's on my Vista laptop too. Anyway I disabled the dell utility to see if that was interfering. Sadly that hasn't solved the situation.
It really is like I move a few meters away from the router and suddenly the signal just dies. There are cordless phones in the house but they're downstairs so they shouldn't interfere. The laptop and router are both upstairs.
@CrippleCaptain: I start right by the router and then move to the next room a few meters away (19:40), you can see the sudden dip. No one in my area is on channel 6.
Ok so I will try and set the scene as best I can.
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop that I use in two houses and always use it in a wireless capacity. The first house has Virgin Media internet and I can go anywhere in the house and have a great connection. The second house has the Post Office internet and that's where I'm having some issues.
If my laptop is next to the router I have an excellent connection. If my laptop goes further than a few meters away from the router, the signal strength goes to fair and I can barely open a web page.
Now my first thought was it's the router or the channel it's set to needs changing but here's the thing. Every other wireless device in the house works perfectly at any distance from the router. We also have another Dell Inspiron, exactly the same specs and that works perfectly around the house.
So now I'm clueless on what's causing my laptop to have such poor signal strength in this house. I've never had an issue with the internet on the laptop side, it's always been a router issue. Not really sure what the next step to take is to fixing this problem..
Anyone got any ideas? Thanks.
Hrmm this is a weird issue and you pretty much covered where I was going to start with. Have you tried power cycling router and modem? Also update wireless card drivers?
@GTFShadow: I had to look up what power cycling is but yeah I have done that a few times while being here today. The connection is erratic, going to very good and then dropping to fair/poor.
Haven't updated drivers yet. As far as I know they're up to date and because the laptop works in other situations perfectly fine, I didn't want to mess with it. (Will probably end up doing this)
I have been wondering about one thing. Dell and windows have their own separate utilities for controlling what network I connect to. Apparently it was supposed to just be for XP but it's on my Vista laptop too. Anyway I disabled the dell utility to see if that was interfering. Sadly that hasn't solved the situation.
It really is like I move a few meters away from the router and suddenly the signal just dies. There are cordless phones in the house but they're downstairs so they shouldn't interfere. The laptop and router are both upstairs.
@X19: install INSSIDER and give us a look at some of the wireless statistics.
@CrippleCaptain: I start right by the router and then move to the next room a few meters away (19:40), you can see the sudden dip. No one in my area is on channel 6.
Hope this helps in some way.
Edit: Pictures aren't working well on this site. Here's a link http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3/35565/2224002-wireless_problem.jpg