Wireless internet - fast on old laptop, slow on new computer (same room and distance)

Yelrah

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Mar 30, 2011
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Hi. Recently moved into a new flat and am having issues with the speed of wireless internet on my computer (desktop). It connects fine and tells me I have a good signal (4 bars out of 5 minimum), however the actual speed it gets is incredibly slow. My laptop, on the other hand, despite being next to the desktop connects fine and has very quick speeds and no issues at all.

I don't use the laptop really other than when I need to work away from my desk, as it's relatively old and slow, and the sound card no longer works. When at home, I use my desktop, however the issues with the internet are causing me some problems.

As I said, the laptop and desktop occupy the same desk when I'm connected, so I'm not sure why there is such a difference in the speeds. Particularly as my computer is a year old custom build (with a new wireless adapter, an Edimax EW-7612PIn 300Mbps Wireless 802.11 b/g/n PCI-e Adapter to be precise), and my laptop is about 6 years old and only has a built in wireless adapter (Intel WiFi Link 5100 AGN). If it was a problem with the adapter, I would've thought I'd have issues with getting signal, or the internet dropping out, however that isn't the issue, it's purely slow speeds, so perhaps it's some kind of configuration issue on my desktop?

I ran some speed tests and got 34.89mbps down, 9.87 up and 14ms ping on my laptop, but on my computer I ended up with 0.63mbps down, 0.02 up and 40ms ping. I did both these speed tests at the same time. Often I can't even complete a speed test on my computer, the speed is that bad.

Would appreciate any help, thanks.
 

James62389

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Mar 21, 2013
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Hi. It's more than likely your wireless card in your desktop that is causing the issue. I've had a few issues with Edimax personally. But first I would try a different PCI slot, if you have one available, to eliminate a "bad" PCI slot being the issue. If the problem persists I would go ahead and get a new wireless card. I've actually had a lot of luck out of the USB wireless cards if you want to give them a shot.

Thanks for reading and good luck.
 

Yelrah

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Mar 30, 2011
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Hi, thanks for the reply! I tried a different PCI port but it didn't help, so I've gone out and bought a new USB wireless adapter, and even one of those plug-in network adapter things (where you can get a "wired" connection from a plug socket). Neither of these have solved the problems with the slow internet on my computer though.

What's odd is that the new USB adapter I bought comes with an adapter that gives me the connection speeds, and is more often than not around 30mbps (which is the speed I'm getting from my laptop). However, when I try an online speed test (or in general, just load a website) it's still incredibly slow. It seems to be like I should be getting high speeds but there's something inherent in the computer, perhaps a configuration setting somewhere, that's slowing everything down? I've tried different browsers to see if one of those was a problem, but that hasn't helped.
 

James62389

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Mar 21, 2013
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I'm assuming you have reset your router and all of that nonsense, but sometimes it really does work. Try releasing and renewing your ip via command prompt, it may not work but at this point it's just trial and error. Other than that, you may want to reformat to see if it was a configuration setting inside windows that was causing the issue.