Poor wifi speed

Hi,

I am having problems with my wifi speed.

I have an Asus X550DP laptop purchased new in March 2014. It came preloaded with Windows 8 but as I do not like this OS I immediately upgraded this to 8.1 via the Asus website. The laptop has a Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wireless network adapter.

When I bought the laptop I was on a "normal" 16 mbs broadband service which at a wired pc gave me 12-14 mbs. And at this time I was getting about 4 -5 mbs at the laptop which was about 40 ft from the hub in the lounge and I didn't think too much of the slower speed.

However, since January 2015 I have changed to a 38 mbs fibre service which gives me approx 37 mbs at the wired pc and about 24 mbs at other devices in the lounge, e.g. an iPad air, a 5+ year old Samsung laptop and an oldish Asus EeePC. But my new Asus laptop refuses to give me more than 3-4 mbs.

I have been in contact with Asus Technical Support who suggested that I update the wireless card driver which I have done. After this was done for maybe a few minutes the wifi speed increased to over 20 mbs in the lounge and 30+ mbs when I was next to the hub but it then went back to 3 - 4 mbs. I reported this to Asus whose only other suggestion was to do a complete system recovery which I am not prepared to do as I spent many, many hours getting the laptop to look and function as a proper windows machine should. They also suggested that it might be a hardware, malware or a corrupted file issue.
As I do regular full system scans I am pretty confident that I don’t have any malware etc. on my system

I then asked Asus if they could provide suggestions as to what or where possible corrupt files are and I would happily go through a checking process. But as I was not prepared to do a system recovery they said the only other thing I could do was to try Forums for a solution and that was the end of their help. To say I am unimpressed is an understatement.

So, I have looked on the internet and there are a number of items about Windows 8.1 and poor wifi connectivity but they don’t relate to the Qualcomm adapter so I am hoping you out there have my solution.

I would really appreciate any help you can offer.

Thanks

 

I'm afraid there is no solution to this problem other than replacing the card.
This particular card is famous for being terrible. It sort of works when on 802.11g networks but on 802.11n, not so much.

The fact that you are rather far from the router makes the poor throughput even worse.

 

gpblancs - We are truly very sorry that you're having these connectivity issues with your notebook. Please contact us via email at [email protected] providing your notebook's serial number and a brief explanation of the issue and we will assist you as best as possible.

If you have any further questions, comments or concerns please do not hesitate to let us know. We will be more than happy to assist you. Once again, thank you for choosing ASUS products and services.

Thank you.


-In Search of Incredible-

Technical Support Department
ASUS :: ASUS Service | North America

 

This, often times, is either a network setting/configuration at the router or in Windows, or the card itself is on the fritz.

You're welcome to give Complete Internet Repair a try (as cheesy as the name sounds, it's a handy utility). That tool will reset a good number of network-related Windows settings, just make sure to check the tick box next to each item before having it go through the motions.

If that doesn't help, and settings at the router seem fine, then the card may very well need swapped out.