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[SOLVED] Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

3K views 46 replies 4 participants last post by  Old Rich 
#1 ·
Recently our cable provider boosted the internet speed to 15Mb/s down and 2Mb/s up. My son is connected to a desktop through the Cisco router and gets the stated speed. My wife has a newer Dell laptop and she also gets the stated speed.

My laptop is much older. I have a Dell Inspiron 9400 running WinXP and it has a WLAN 1390 card that doesn't have 5GHz capabilities.

The fastest speed I have been able to get out of the wirless card is 7Mb/s down and 2Mb/s up.

Is this the limitation of my 1390 mini card or is something else going on here.

Thanks.
 
#2 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Your system is most likely running 802.11g wireless. You'll always have slower speeds over the newer machines.

I should also mention that if you're on a Windows XP machine, you should avoid being online as the risk of malware is quite high for your system.
 
#3 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

It could be . . have you installed the newest driver from the manufacturers support site?

Lets take a peek at your network environment:

Please Download and run this Xirrus WiFi Inspector, click the Networks link on the upper left and paste a screen shot of that screen here. Note that this application requires NET Framework to run. If you get an error about a missing function, download and install NET Framework.


To post a screen shot of the active window, hold the Alt key and press the PrtScn key. Open the Windows PAINT application and Paste the screen shot. You can then use PAINT to trim to suit, and save it as a JPG format file. To upload it to the forum, open the full reply window and use the Manage Attachments button to upload it here. For Vista and Windows 7, 8 you can use the Windows Snipping Tool
 
#5 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Nice strong signal . . Let's see how the ISP is handling the traffic . .

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD to open a command prompt:

Type or Copy and Paste the following" and press enter


echo > 0 & PING 192.168.1.1 >> 0 & PING 46.228.47.115 >> 0 & PING google.com >> 0 & tracert google.com >> 0 & echo [/php] >> 0 & notepad 0


That can take a few minutes to complete, come back and past the result in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.
 
#6 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Here is the result


ECHO is on.


Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:



Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64



Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 2ms, Average = 2ms



Pinging 46.228.47.115 with 32 bytes of data:



Reply from 46.228.47.115: bytes=32 time=118ms TTL=52

Reply from 46.228.47.115: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=52

Reply from 46.228.47.115: bytes=32 time=161ms TTL=52

Reply from 46.228.47.115: bytes=32 time=237ms TTL=52



Ping statistics for 46.228.47.115:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 118ms, Maximum = 237ms, Average = 162ms



Pinging google.com [216.58.217.206] with 32 bytes of data:



Reply from 216.58.217.206: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50

Reply from 216.58.217.206: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=50

Reply from 216.58.217.206: bytes=32 time=84ms TTL=50

Reply from 216.58.217.206: bytes=32 time=84ms TTL=50



Ping statistics for 216.58.217.206:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 86ms, Average = 84ms



Tracing route to google.com [216.58.217.206]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 5 ms * 2 ms 192.168.1.1

2 * 10 ms 13 ms 10.4.8.1

3 14 ms 10 ms 29 ms ip98-190-162-106.ri.ri.cox.net [98.190.162.106]

4 14 ms 18 ms 11 ms ip98-190-33-88.ri.ri.cox.net [98.190.33.88]

5 16 ms 20 ms 32 ms ip98-190-33-24.ri.ri.cox.net [98.190.33.24]

6 25 ms 29 ms 25 ms nyrkbprj01-ae3.0.rd.ny.cox.net [68.1.5.157]

7 22 ms 19 ms 22 ms 68.105.31.87

8 24 ms 20 ms 28 ms 216.239.50.106

9 33 ms 22 ms 20 ms 209.85.249.212

10 39 ms * 41 ms 216.239.46.217

11 48 ms 56 ms 52 ms 209.85.249.64

12 62 ms * 64 ms 216.239.51.109

13 92 ms 84 ms 85 ms 216.239.46.153

14 84 ms 89 ms 80 ms 64.233.174.191

15 88 ms 84 ms 90 ms 216.239.51.55

16 100 ms 81 ms 84 ms lax17s05-in-f14.1e100.net [216.58.217.206]



Trace complete.

[/php]
 
#8 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

The latest driver that I could find was 2007. Still pretty outdated. It had a 2006 driver in it. I thought I found a 2014 driver but it turned out to be the 2007 driver.

Now the question is, if I upgrade the mini card to a more modern version....will it help?
 
#10 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

My previous internet speed was 5Mb/s down and about .8Mb/s upload.

I noticed that it was doing just under 2Mb/s up and checked my account to find that they upgraded their lowest speed customers to the new lowest speed which is now 15Mb/s.

I hooked it up the the router with an Ethernet cable and was able to confirm the 15Mb/s down. It actually did a bit better than 16.

I then switched off the local and back to the wifi card and it actually did 10Mb/s down. I had a -35db signal because I was only a few feet from the antenna. I went back to my chair and the signal was back to it's normal -45 to -50dB as was noted on the Xirrus program.

But it was still doing about 9Mb/s. Just checked it right now and saw 10Mb/s. Wonder if connecting it to the router directly kicked something back into place.

I was looking at this card for my Inspiron.

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-BCM94321MC-MX846-DW1500-NJ449/dp/B00FA3NR3E
 
#12 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Yes, this is the card that will fit into my computer. They have several form factors that are the half height version. I guess the only problem might be finding a driver for it that supports XP
 
#15 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Opened up the area that holds the Wifi card on my computer to verify that the form was the same as the link I showed you, it was PCI-e.

I figure for under $15 including shipping I'd give it a shot. Can't imagine it'll be worse then this antique of a card. :dance:
 
#19 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Copy cat :whistling:

Glad this might help you out too. Dell laptop or something else?

I guess confidence is high. Should have waited for me to report back. You'll probably get yours before I get mine, it comes from Hutto TX

Mine should be here Tuesday.
 
#24 ·
Re: Everybody In The House Has Fast Wireless But My Laptop

Just checked and it still said 2. You'll get yours. I ordered when they had 3. Took a day for the order to be processed. Maybe it won't get processed til Monday.

Hope it works, for both of us. Now I'll just have to find the correct driver. Not really bothering to look yet, although I'll need it before I install the card lest I hook up by Ethernet cable.
 
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