I built a PC for my friend and I am at my wit’s end in trying to figure out why the wifi isn’t working well on his PC. MB: Z87-G45 GAMING OS: windows 11 RAM: don’t recall brand, but I think it has 16gb Old Wifi Adaptor: FV-AC2030T (I don’t have the part information for the new wifi adaptor that we bought within the last month) GPU: ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6600 Challenger
Issues: High ping, average was about 80-100 ( not bad ) but it would have spikes of high ping(200+), and there would be anywhere from 5 to 10% packet loss. Info was from using the ping command to reach out to google. Packet loss was also seen when pinging the router directly.
Things I have tried:
- Checking whether it was just the strength of the wifi being an issue. I brought over my own PC and confirmed that my PC’s wifi was better than his.
- Updating the motherboard BIOS and drivers (link to their website) The BIOS was an older version originally (don’t recall which one) but I’ve updated it to 1.9. I updated the drivers to 10.1.1.45 for Windows 10 64. Potentially this is a problem since windows 11 is what is installed.
- ensuring the drivers for the old wifi adaptor were up to date. Did the same for the new one.
- Switching out the wifi adaptor in case the old one was faulty. The one listed above is the old on, I don’t have info on hand for the new one.
- Checked a couple of different RAM module in case 1 was faulty. I think i test all 4 ram modules, alone connected the the primary RAM slot and the wifi was not affected.
As of now, the options I’m seeing are to get a new board, ram and cpu, or installing windows 10 (since the board doens’t come with TPM and may be the cause)
Linux sadly isn’t an option due to the games my cousin plays not all functioning on Linux.
Any suggestions at all would be appreciated.
This is a silly question, but if the card(s) came with screw-on antennas, have those been attached?
Good question, especially since at one point, the original ones were ripped off. Now though, I installed the replacement antennas.
Where did you source the replacement antennas from?
I’ve dabbled in a little bit of ham radio stuff, and in that realm making sure your antenna is properly tuned to the equipment you’re using it with is kind of a big deal, I’d imagine it also plays some part with WiFi, it’s all radio waves after all. It could maybe be that the antennas you got aren’t’t quite right for the adapter.
So, with the old wifi adapter, I used another (my) wifi antennas. We got a new wifi adapter and used its own antennas. Problem still persisted.
It wasn’t a silly question after reading the OP answer xD
By chance did you check his wifi cards in your PC? The chances both are bad are low, but you never know.
I did not, and it is something I should have done you’re right, even if not likely.
Have you tried moving the pc itself. I had a similar issue at my old place where the pc was sat in a corner with the antennas at the back. This probably had a negative effect on the signal to my router. Only when moving and shifting stuff around my desk did I figure out that the pcs position was the issue.
I did. I moved it from upstairs to downstairs ( about 8 feet from the router) and still high bad internet issues.
First thing I’d check is the frequency the wifi is running at. Right click the wifi icon and do Network and Internet Settings. At the top under properties it should say 2.4, 5, or 6ghz.
If it’s 2.4 are you in an apartment where there’s a lot of people? 2.4ghz is basically unusable in most apartments for anything other than basic stuff.
If it’s 5ghz then that’s good, but you’d want to make sure the signal is strong and the link speed is decent. Is the wifi icon in the task bar full? Or is it missing 1 or 2 lines? Anything other than “full” according to that graph is going to get bad, but shouldn’t be 5-10% packet loss. For the speed click on where it says wifi in that settings screen, then hardware properties and look at Aggregrated Link Speed. Is that more than like 100?
Z87 is 4th gen Haswell on Windows 11 which isn’t 100% supported, so that could be the issue too. Can you try a live USB of Linux to see if it’s a software issue or hardware?
2.4 is what is was running from my recollection, and it may have had 1 line missing in the wifi icon. Yeah the live usb is something I want to try as well. I don’t have access to the system, but I will try this and let you know if I can resolve it. Thank you!
Are they far away from the router? I’d double check that the antennas are plugged in, and in a good spot for good signal. 2.4ghz has HUGE range, but also a huge interference problem so that alone could be it.
What I found on google for “FV-AC2030T” was a large pcie card with a big external antenna so it should have no issues with signal unless the antennas are damaged or not plugged in. Especially since it’s an Intel card to boot.
its directly upstairs from the router. His xbox series [something] has good connection as well from about the same location. I suppose my PC and his xbox could have connected via 5ghz and his through 2.4, which would explain why my PC was fine and his wasn’t, but who knows. Regardless I’ll try out the other things you mentioned when I can.
Perhaps?
I found that powerline adaptors were a great temp fix until I was able to run some cat6a through the walls / ceiling.
deleted by creator
I did, I took out the wifi card (blocked a slot/couldn’t fit in another slot) and still the wifi speed was bad.
Have you tried moving his system closer? Have you tried using your system near his location? It’s not just microwaves that can interfere with wifi, but also some kinds of fluorescent lights, or even infrastructure (pipes, electrical, mesh retaining, etc).
What is the signal db loss? Ping is a catch-all metric but isn’t reliable for nailing down specific problems. Also the varying ping times is called jitter, and some jitter is perfectly normal - wifi tends to amplify ping and jitter. Don’t get too hung up on high ping unless it is a problem.
If db loss is acceptable, is his tcp/ip stack compromised? Run a virus check, ensure his network configurations aren’t being hijacked (check dns, proxy, etc). Reset the stack and configs if necessary.
Has his router been compromised? There is firmware that is going around hijacking routers for botnets - very hard to identify and reverse from what I recall. Try another router if you have one. Aside: Might be a good idea to factory reset the router and start with a clean slate too.
Is your wireless network congested? too many devices can cause large ping and jitter, even if they aren’t on your network. Removing devices, changing wifi channels, disabling guest connectivity, and enabling game mode on the router can improve the congestion issue to varying degrees.
TPM has nothing to do with networking, which is good because there are bootable USB OS’s you can run to test your hardware without wiping your current install if you feel like it might be another type of compatibility issue (TPM would make this much harder to do).
How did you test ping? Was it just in games? Or did you actually ping various websites? Does ping improve if you are hardwired to the router? What is the router model? Is QoS on? Have you run traceroute to see where the packets may be getting dropped?
In cmd I would ping Google and in games we would check his ping as well. I didn’t ping various websites so I’ll look into doing that as well. I will have to try the other things you mentioned/look them up as I’m not familiar with QoS, nor trace routes.
Try a linux live ISO so you can rule out software
Yeah that’s the next thing I want to do.
You might check the PCIe pins for any signs of corrosion and/or hit them with the good old isopropyl+toothbrush treatment.
The board has 2 sets of PCie slots for the wifi adaptor and both experience the same issue. Regardless, I may try that.
The contacts i’m suspicious of are the gold finger board contacts on the module itself, not the PCIe slots on the motherboard.
Re-reading my original post I did call them something weird, sorry about that.
You need to hardwire the thing to properly start troubleshooting. Otherwise you may be scrambling around in the wrong space.
Could you expand on what properly troubleshooting would entail after hard wiring it?
Sounds like a temporary permanent fix.
Could be seeing if it’s a modem / other hardware fault.
Id personally try a hardwired connection, and if the problem persists try a live Linux distro and see if the problem persists there.
