For the past day I have been having connectivity problems. My PC is newly built, runs Windows 8.1, and has been working fine for weeks, but around early afternoon yesterday the connection slowed to a trickle for several hours. Later in the evening, it began cutting in and out, becoming completely unreliable. The only consistency is that it seems to work shortly after startup and sign-in, connecting me to a website or two before slowing down and/or simply cutting out completely.
This should be a problem with just my PC, not the wi-fi network itself, because I'm typing this from my laptop that has no connectivity problems whatsoever on the same network; also, resetting the router multiple times has had no effect. I have also tried two different wireless adapters for my PC, and neither seemed to make a difference, having the same connectivity problems.
All I did yesterday afternoon on my PC was run some system scans using Avast free antivirus (version 2014.9.0.2018, seemingly completely up to date) and Spybot v2.3 free edition, which have up 'til now worked seemingly without a hitch. In the morning the PC worked fine for streaming, gaming, what have you; in the afternoon after these scans, I tried DLing a game (Unrest) from Steam and the download was quite slow, followed by the connection lapsing into the problems I describe above. So far as I can tell, only one item was flagged as a threat and quarantined by these scans, a "cbrreader_setup.exe" which should have nothing whatsoever to do with internet connectivity.
Today I tried disabling both Avast and Spybot, swapping out wi-fi adapters, and performing a system restore to five days ago (when I recall no connectivity problems happening whatsoever). None of these appear to have done anything; the computer continues to connect at startup, work for a few moments, and then the connection slows or dies. Quite often the computer will "lose sight" of my wi-fi network completely and not register it as available, despite, again, my laptop remaining connected with no problems. Other times the computer will register as being connected to our network, but websites will either load quite slowly or the browser (Chrome) will give up and send the message that it can't connect to the server or that the connection was reset.
So, does anyone have an idea what might be causing this? I would be very grateful for any pointers or advice on what to try. If more info is required please just ask. Thanks in advance!
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connection works startup slow dead