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.
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.