Poor Wi-fi internet signal at home.

Hello everyone.

We are near Slough and have our broadband from Sky, using a Netgear router. My wife and I each have a Dell Inspiron laptop and my son has a Novatech laptop.

The quality and reliability of our internet broadband signal is hopeless in our Dell laptops. I'm currently in our living room about 12ft from the router and getting a signal strength indication of two bars out of five and a descritption of "fair". Upstairs, it's worse, not least because it's further away from the router, no doubt. Oddly, my son's laptop never gets less than four bars anywhere in the house!

My Dell also drops out of the internet from time to time. A yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark inside it appears over the signal strength indicator for a period of time ranging from a few seconds to several minutes. My laptop went back to Dell last week and, having had a new wireless card and Windows 7 reinstalled, came back with the problem no better, and possibly worse!! My son's laptop has NEVER had a yellow triangle!

I mentioned all this to a friend (a chiropractor) this week and she said I should check out a company called Devolo who, along with others, provide a signal boost system where you connect a piece of equipment to the router and the mains, and then plug another socket into the mains in the room where you want to use the computer. She assures me that this has saved her business because, until she bought it, she was unable to use her computer in her house which is in the same building as her chiropractic reception area, where the router is located.

Has anyone out there had any experience of these signal boosters? Or, indeed, have you any idea how to eliminate this ****** yellow triangle that appears when the internet "jumps out"?

Thanks a lot.

Mike

I know nothing about the 'techy' side of computers so can't help with the difference between yours and your son's laptop and the signal strength. I can however vouch for Devolo. I moved my desktop pc from a back bedroom to one over the garage at the side of the house and could no longer get a useable internet signal. I use my pc for crafting and had just rearranged my craft room so the computer desk would fit in. I was so disappointed that I couldn't use the internet in my craft room and didn't want to move the desk back to the back bedroom which I'd done out as a spare bedroom. Hubby discovered Devolo and it works brilliantly. The system I have looks just like 2 large plugs. One is plugged into a socket downstairs with a lead going into the router, the other is plugged into a socket in the craft room with a wire going into the pc. The internet signal is then carried through the electrical wires in the house - at least that's my understanding of how it works! The desktop internet is now faster than my laptop that is used in the same room as the router. I really can't say whether it will help you as our internet signal is very good anyway. Hopefully someone who is more technically savvy will be along to post some advise that will help you.

Hello PP

Many thanks, indeed. That's a great recommendation and I think I'll give Devolo themselves a ring and have a chat about my situation.

Mike

Im not really very techy but i would say the fault lies with Dell and id be back in touch with them, i dont see why you should have to buy a signal booster or anything if your sons laptop works perfectly fine.I guess depending how old ur laptops are, are they still under warranty?

Hello Autumn.

My laptop is 2 years old and has an extended warranty for two more years. I sent it to Dell last week because we too feel that the problem lies with them. As I said above, they reinstalled Windows 7 and added a new wireless card but this didn't work. I don't really think sending it to them again is going to get the problem sorted. I'm going to ask for them to come to me and see the problem first hand. The odd thing is that when the internet cuts out and the yellow triangle appears, you can still see that the signal strength indicator shows a strength level below the triangle!

My wife's Dell is three years old but doesn't have a warranty. However, she doesn't have the problem to anything like the same degree as mine and she's happy to soldier on.

I have looked at Google and it's surprising how many people have this

MIKE040249 said:

Hello Autumn.

My laptop is 2 years old and has an extended warranty for two more years. I sent it to Dell last week because we too feel that the problem lies with them. As I said above, they reinstalled Windows 7 and added a new wireless card but this didn't work. I don't really think sending it to them again is going to get the problem sorted. I'm going to ask for them to come to me and see the problem first hand. The odd thing is that when the internet cuts out and the yellow triangle appears, you can still see that the signal strength indicator shows a strength level below the triangle!

My wife's Dell is three years old but doesn't have a warranty. However, she doesn't have the problem to anything like the same degree as mine and she's happy to soldier on.

I have looked at Google and it's surprising how many people have this

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Oh then get back on at Dell and dont take no for an answer, ur laptop is still under warranty so its up to them to fix it, dont spend anymore more money as its there issue not urs.

Might actually be the router. What you need to check if the router channel is set to something like 12 or below. There are some wireless cards that don't work at channel 13/14 due to the American FCC restrictions which aren't present in Europe. I learnt the hard way that setting my router to ch13 meant my trusty old Asus laptop failed to do anything - the wireless card itself wasn't able to have the additional channels!

I'd also check if some of your neighbours aren't using the same channel as you and you just happen to be the unlucky one who gets interfered with! This free software will tell you very quickly: http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

Also have a dig around in the router settings for something like b/g settings. There is a possibility that the slower b speed is being used by the Insipron and setting it to the higher g speed may fix it.

Alternatively, you could buy a usb wifi dongle and see if that improves the quality.