3 year old laptop

[kavesh]

I have taken over my wifes old laptop which is an i7, really nice machine.

I have 2 issues with it though and hope someone can advise.

Problem 1 - the wifi will not connect unless I am right next to the router. All other devices connect perfectly well to the router. This issue has been around for about a year and we were not able to resolve it. The work around was a USB dongle for the wifi, but even with that its not as good as other devices and oh yes I broke the dongle when placing the laptop into the bag.

Problem 2 - my wife always complained that the computer got really slow about 6 months or so ago but we did not try to resolve the problem. I removed all data from the laptop and reset windows and deleted all programs hoping that it may resolve both issues actually, sadly it did neither.

Any ideas guys?

Thanks
Kavesh

[wernerdp]

Problem 1 , wrong wifi driver , or in the device manager under network , wifi properties , advanced , the "transmit power is set to low " change to highest
Also check if there is a BIOS update for the laptop
Problem 2 , control alt delete , task manager , see what is running and what % the cpu , and hard drive uses when Idle . ( let laptop boot up and wait about 5 min everything loads)
I also have a I7 laptop , when idle the cpu uses less that 1%

[AmithS]

Do you know the processor chip model example i7-4550? you have different generations of chips and the older the chip generation the less effective it will be than the newer generation i7 due to aging of the actual physical chip and newer software resource requirements.

What version of Windows are you running and did you change from the original version the laptop came with?

Do you know the size of the RAM and HDD?

[kavesh]

Problem 1 , wrong wifi driver , or in the device manager under network , wifi properties , advanced , the "transmit power is set to low " change to highest
Also check if there is a BIOS update for the laptop
Problem 2 , control alt delete , task manager , see what is running and what % the cpu , and hard drive uses when Idle . ( let laptop boot up and wait about 5 min everything loads)
I also have a I7 laptop , when idle the cpu uses less that 1%

Thanks WernerDP. It what I was able to determine is that the wifi on the laptop was a 802.11b while the usb dongle was a 802.11n. I did read that the 802.11n is better for some reason, could this have been my problem, I could not figure out how to change the driver so I uninstalled it and downloaded a driver which seems to have the same results, so no improvement.
Not sure how to check for BIOS update, any advice on that please.
My CPU % keeps fluctuating between 2 - 10% while idle

[kavesh]

Do you know the processor chip model example i7-4550? you have different generations of chips and the older the chip generation the less effective it will be than the newer generation i7 due to aging of the actual physical chip and newer software resource requirements.

What version of Windows are you running and did you change from the original version the laptop came with?

Do you know the size of the RAM and HDD?

Hi AmithS, its an intel(R) core(TM) i7 3537U CPU @ 2.0GHz 2.50GHz with 8gigs of installed ram , 64 bit operating system, x64 based processor.

I am running windows 10. Originally it came with windows 8. There was a free upgrade a while back to windows 10.

[wernerdp]

Which make is the laptop , just go to there website , type in the model nr , and it should give you all the available updates including Bios ( which should be updates since you updated from win 8 to 10.
Laptop should be fine 3rd generation intel more than enough for Win 10 ,remove some of the windows 10 bloatware .

In the device manager , under the wifi properties check if the 802.11n setting is set to auto .

Best advice wipe the laptop , install clean windows 10 from bootable USB drive , these auto updates always gives problems

[kavesh]

Which make is the laptop , just go to there website , type in the model nr , and it should give you all the available updates including Bios ( which should be updates since you updated from win 8 to 10.
Laptop should be fine 3rd generation intel more than enough for Win 10 ,remove some of the windows 10 bloatware .

In the device manager , under the wifi properties check if the 802.11n setting is set to auto .

Best advice wipe the laptop , install clean windows 10 from bootable USB drive , these auto updates always gives problems

So I just checked the wifi properties and it still has the "802.11b Preamble" The value is currently "Long and Short" The other value that it could be set to is "Long Only"
How do I change the 802.11b to a 802.11n?

So I cleaned out my harddrive and did a windows reset twice hoping that it would sort out the wifi issue as well as the performance. To some extent the performance has improved so that is positive, however, wifi remains an issue.
How do I get windows on a disk as it came pre-installed on the laptop

Btw my harddrive is a 1TB.

The make of the laptop is an ASUS touchscreen. Not sure of the exact model. Any ideas how to determine the model of this laptop?

[AmithS]

You could try uninstalling the wifi module drivers and allowing windows to find the most suitable driver to reinstall. It does come with risks thou. You will need an internet connection on the laptop - through a phone or 3G dongle to allow windows to find the latest driver. If windows cannot find the driver you will have to search the net manually and do a manual install of the driver...

[AmithS]

What other software are you using on the laptop e.g. office or graphic design software?

[wernerdp]

https://www.asus.com/support/Download-Center/
look for the model number under the laptop on the sticker , or when the laptop starts , hit the DEL or F2 button to enter the BIOS model number will be there ( I think ASUS uses DEL button )