Well, so, the problem has been with my laptop Network Adapter. This started to manifest itself several days ago when my WiFi connection would drop out when I closed the lid and the only way to reconnect was to right click the WiFi icon and run the Troubleshooter. This worked for a time but soon the computer was dropping WiFi regularly and annoyingly at any time and often needed a re-boot to get it back – back for a while. Have you any idea, once you’re retired and have left the world, how utterly useless a computer is if you can’t access the Inter-Webs?
What to do; on the PC, hard plumbed into the router, I done did a Google and found this is quite a regularly faced problem with pages and pages giving the same cure – a cure that it seems, didn’t work for the majority. Me included.
Anyhoo, that penny I have I have constantly twirling in the wild blue yonder of my brain finally hit the deck thusly.
I mentioned earlier that fibre is rolling out all over this neighbourhood and this, going by van movements, seems to be accelerating so I put myself in the head of the fibre installers heads and went to work; I roll up in the AM and am handed my job list for the day. Now I know that the sooner I say bu-by to the last customer, the sooner I’m in the pub thus I hit the first door, get in, drill holes, run cable, hook it up to the new router and ask the customer to open their browser. Can they see a Web page? Can? Good. Job done. Bu-by. Do I sit down with each customer and show them how to access the router settings and what all those setting do? You’re kidding, right? I say bu-by and move on – ever closer to the pub.
This got me – don’t laugh – thinking. More and more installations, more and more new routers and what’s the betting all these new routers, and likely many old routers, are all operating under factory default settings such as the classic admin = password. Yes, after my own setup, I did go and change all the passwords and amended the default security settings. I didn’t, however, check one particular setting that could possibly effect, affect{?} efficiency. So back into settings went I and, sure enough, there it was; the wireless channel was set to what it helpfully called the factory default of 1. Obviously along with countless other routers in my local. Old and new and more and more day by day.
Does it matter? One way to find out, right? I changed it, as you would, and at time of typing, the laptop is holding the connection rock solid as before, lid up or down, and the Web is whizzing along. In fact it seems far whizzier than it was before thus confirming for me, once again, that the easy thirty second fix was patiently waiting for me right at the end of five days of complex, time consuming non fixes. What can I say? is that really wot sorted it? You’re asking me? No idea, but it worked. For me.
There you go; if you have problems with your laptop losing your WiFi connection or getting a tad sluggish online, changing wireless channels may, just may, be a worthwhile starting point to try.
Oh, and if you’ve never looked at your router settings before, like all of us at one time, and you discover your password is password, it’d be, like, cool to change it while you’re there...
Quote; Katherine Parkinson.
“I'm going to get myself one of those, um, movable computers - what do you call them...? Laptops!! I am bad. I still call my radio a wireless.”
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