laptop wifi reception very weak

Pedroski · 08-05-2023, 06:07 AM

I'm at my sister's house. The British Telecom router is in the hallway. If I am in the living room, maybe 8' to 10' away, only separated by a thin plasterboard wall, my laptop keeps dropping the wifi. Same with the little back room, really only 8' from the router!

I have an hp laptop, my sister has a Lenovo. She says she never has that problem, although she can't use the wifi when she is upstairs.

Can I somehow increase the wifi reception strength?

Or should I plug one of those modems with four antennas into the router?

I remember when the guy connected the internet in our apartment, he said, "This 5G signal is very weak. You may not be able to connect to it in another room." But I had an extra 5G modem in my little study, so that was never a problem.

lvm_ · 08-05-2023, 07:05 AM

Probably the guy was talking about 5GHz - a different wi-fi band, not 5G. Try locking your laptop to 2.4 GHz, it penetrates walls better.

Pedroski · 08-05-2023, 07:34 AM

Thank you very much!

Seems to be working! I suppose my laptop kept looking for a non-existing 5GHz band!

Pedroski · 08-06-2023, 04:33 AM

Spoke too soon! This morning the wifi keeps dropping even though I set it to 2.4Ghz band!

I will find an HP service centre and ask them what might be wrong.

Pedroski · 08-06-2023, 05:20 AM

Can I fix this problem with a usb wifi adapter?

I have an

rtw_8821ce

wifi adapter

Quote:

In the last year or two, there are two model wifi adapters that HP is using in many model notebooks that are terrible.
The Realtek 8821CE, and the Realtek 8822BE wifi adapters. They are constantly dropping the wifi connection.

Realtek had been releasing drivers on an almost weekly basis trying to get these crummy cards to work. I don't know if they are done yet, but each driver release seems to make things better.

frankbell · 08-06-2023, 10:09 PM

A web search seems to indicate that you will need to find drivers for that device.

Pedroski · 08-08-2023, 04:09 PM

@frankbell

Strange thing: I am in Germany for a couple of weeks.

The wifi is much further away than at my sister's house, a wall between my room and the router, but the wifi works fine!

If only the weather were more clement!

frankbell · 08-08-2023, 08:58 PM

In that case, I have to take back what I said. It seems you have working drivers. Most curious.

Maybe there's some kind of interference at your sister's place. I have had intermittent issues with the wireless and my laptop, which is usually on a different floor at the other end of the condom, which I think was likely environmental interference. Of course, I have no way of knowing what devices are in the adjacent condo unit.