Slow wireless - Intel AC2160 card

[goombawaho]

One of my customers complained of slow wifi at her house on her laptop in particular. I had her bring it to her office so I could check it out in general. I updated all the drivers, BIOS, cleaned out temp files. It seems to be running fine other than internet. The office wifi is ONLY 2.4GHz band, Comcast Business Class 50Mbps using old DSL modem as access point. Her laptop is a Dell Inspiron 3558 with Windows 10 64-bit 6GB of RAM and a Samsung EVO850 SSD.

Here is the performance at the office for her laptop and my laptop right next to the access point. My laptop has an Intel AC7260 card in it.
My laptop on wifi 15.8 download/3.6 upload 2nd run 15.1/3.2
Her laptop on wifi 1.9 download/2.1 upload 2nd run 1.9/3.3

My laptop on ethernet 19.8/3.3
Her laptop on ethernet 1.8/4.3

So, I'm confused. Her machine is not just slow on wifi, which is all she ever uses at home.
Was thinking of trying a router with a 5GHz band, but that doesn't explain slowness on ethernet!!!

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

Should have said AC3160 wifi card!!!!!!!!

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[rclarke250]

Strange, but I see a lot of people have an issue something like this, and a lot seem to fix it by disabling the Bluetooth adapter.

 

[goombawaho]

I saw that mentioned on an Intel forum for the AC3160 card. But, how does that explain the slowness over ethernet?



"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[gbaughma]

Did you try doing a:

netsh winsock reset

... from an elevated command prompt?

Additionally, if you are physically close to the wireless, try turning down the power. I have seen issues where the signal is so "loud" it "distorts" (kind of like listening to music too loud)


Just my $.02

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

 

[goombawaho]

I can try that - waiting for the customer to give me an update after I touched the laptop.



"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

I duplicated the strange/slow behavior at my house now. Sometimes it's fast (same as my computer) on boht ethernet and wifi and then sometimes slow on both. I'm doing a full malware scan with ESET online scanner right now but I don't suspect malware.

How could a hardware problem be affecting both wired and wireless connections?

Did a "netsh winsock reset" and "netsh int ip reset" but still no difference.
All drivers are updated to latest.
I checked all power options
I disabled the bluetooth adapter

Stumped.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[kjv1611]

Is it possible to try a different user account to see if it's something messed up with the user profile? Baffling that it's both ethernet and wifi having issues.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[goombawaho]

Tried memory test too. Don't know what else to say except "bad motherboard"? The quick Dell diagnostics shows no problems.

Anybody know of good/small footprint bootable Linux distribution that I could use to bypass Windows?

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[kjv1611]

Dell Diagnostics in my recent experience haven't shown problems when we knew there were problems. Maybe if a machine caught on fire, Dell Diagnostics would find out.

Did you try another user login/profile? Since it's both Ethernet and Wifi for slow connection, but not everything running slow, I would not suspect the motherboard. A try with a Linux distro could be a good workaround. Ubuntu isn't very light, but it's loaded with all sorts of tools and options, and usually handles wifi really well.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[goombawaho]

Clean boot didn't make any difference either. I'll create a new user and try it.

I need a bootable linux distro with a browser to run internet speed test as the hard drive is VERY HARD to get out of this machine, otherwise I would have already put in another drive and loaded Windows on it and tested that way.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

A newly created user has the same issue. Wow - insanity.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[goombawaho]

Finally created a bootable Ubuntu 16 USB stick. Seems to show (in Firefox browser) that speed is what it should be - on both wired and wireless. Therefore, something wrong with Windows 10 is the only conclusion I can come to.

But............. any way to fix it without losing all the installed programs. Probably not. Data is not an issue.

Any kind of "super repair" other than REFRESH or RESET options?

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[kjv1611]

Probably not the case, but is System Restore enabled? By default in Windows 10 it's disabled.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[kjv1611]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, or so I didn't see it: Does it perform OK in Safe Mode with Networking? That might point to it being a piece of security software or other startup program causing the issue.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[goombawaho]

I tried that and NO it did not perform normally. But, it does perform normally with Ubuntu. So, I have to conclude that something is borked within Windows 10. I hope that if I reload this thing with Windows 10 that the problem doesn't reappear.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[kjv1611]

Hmm... and just to make sure - probably too late now - you did try sfc /scannow and/or dism in case it's just one odd random system file that's damaged?

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[gbaughma]

Perhaps AV doing SPI? (Just trying to think of what would slow down network speed globally)...



Just my $.02

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

 

[kjv1611]

I guess to test it, you could uninstall the antivirus program that's currently being used, and see if any difference.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[MikeHalloran]

I've seen similar problems when motherboards were set up to echo stdout to a serial port, so you could figure out what was going on even without a monitor.

... but that was decades ago, when motherboards actually came with serial port support.