Wifi cards

[icecream-guy]

do imbedded wifi cards fail very often ?
my wife laptop is like 12 feet away from the AP and gets 1 bar,
when I go close it's like 3 bars, no interference between, line of sight.
I checked the network adapter in the network settings, transmit is on high,
maybe something in BIOS?
 

[Dieselboy]

The antenna cable might not be seated fully. Has it always been like this? Has it been knocked at all. Has any updates installed new drivers?

You could run a Linux bootable ISO and check if the same isuse is there, if so then probably hardware-related.

Also, I bought a 802.11n (2.4GHz) mini usb dongle that is barely noticeable when plugged in, for <$5 from ebay. Could be an idea...

[deanwebb]

^ New drivers, always check those drivers.

[icecream-guy]

I need to do that,   I resolved it bu turning on a new 5GHZ 102.11ac radio on the AP and setup the laptop to use it. seemed to work much better,

[Dieselboy]

Could be interference from nearby wifi on the same channel. I've noticed here that people are trying to improve their crappy wifi by enabling 40mhz-wide 802.11n 2.4ghz. Since with a 20mhz wide channel there are only 3 channels, if you have one silly person in the area with 40mhz wide then this leaves only 1 free channel but most of the time they're also using a channel like "9" which makes the problem worse.

[icecream-guy]

Could be interference from nearby wifi on the same channel. I've noticed here that people are trying to improve their crappy wifi by enabling 40mhz-wide 802.11n 2.4ghz. Since with a 20mhz wide channel there are only 3 channels, if you have one silly person in the area with 40mhz wide then this leaves only 1 free channel but most of the time they're also using a channel like "9" which makes the problem worse.

In the 2.4 GHZ, the laptop is like 10 feet (3m) away from the AP, and only gets 0 or 1 bar. It does not see any of the neighbors AP's. (Sidebar, wife didn't have the wifi auto connect feature enabled so at 0 bar, disconnect and never reconnect until done manually.  I fixed that.).  Daughter and her laptop 20 ft (6m) away,  gets 2-3 bars all day on 2.4Ghz, has no issues like the wife Toshiba laptop.  Only when I place the wife laptop right next to the AP, does it get 3 bars, not even 4.

[Dieselboy]

Could be interference from nearby wifi on the same channel. I've noticed here that people are trying to improve their crappy wifi by enabling 40mhz-wide 802.11n 2.4ghz. Since with a 20mhz wide channel there are only 3 channels, if you have one silly person in the area with 40mhz wide then this leaves only 1 free channel but most of the time they're also using a channel like "9" which makes the problem worse.

In the 2.4 GHZ, the laptop is like 10 feet (3m) away from the AP, and only gets 0 or 1 bar. It does not see any of the neighbors AP's.

Yes you're completely right.  I must not have had my coffee this morning