March 29, 2024

Bad Wi-Fi Signal on Your PC? Do This to Fix It

Bad Wi-Fi Signal on Your PC? Do This to Fix It

A desktop computer setup featuring a Wi-Fi card with an external antenna.
Syafiq Adnan/Shutterstock.com

If you use Wi-Fi on your personal computer and the connection is considerably less than satisfactory, we’ve acquired a easy and low-cost way to enhance your Wi-Fi reception.

This Hack Will not Fix Really serious Wi-Fi Complications

In advance of we dig in, let’s get a single point out of the way. The Wi-Fi hack we’re about to share is a uncomplicated way to get greater Wi-Fi reception for your computer system.

It will work for desktop PCs, and it can even do the job for some laptops, depending on how you get Wi-Fi on your laptop. But what it just can’t do is make Wi-Fi out of nothing at all.

If the signal from your Wi-Fi router at the locale of your laptop or computer is exceptionally weak or not even current, then that is a even bigger problem you need to have to address very first.

We’d recommend working with these ideas to enhance your Wi-Fi sign at the router and then, if required, transfer on to working with the sign power exactly where your personal computer is located. You might contemplate upgrading your router to get superior protection not just for your Laptop but all over the place in your household.

How to Get a Better Wi-Fi Signal at Your Pc

For the objective of this Wi-Fi-maximizing trick, we’re assuming that you have a set up identical to the Wi-Fi setup found in our tutorial on introducing Wi-Fi to your Computer.

Whether you added a Wi-Fi card to your Personal computer, the motherboard came with a Wi-Fi card designed-in (like the MSI motherboard I applied in my Slide 2021 rebuild), or you’ve been making use of a Wi-Fi dongle on your Laptop or laptop computer, you can stick to alongside.

There’s a very simple way to get a superior signal: use an extension cable to move the antenna or dongle exactly where the sign is stronger.

Why is this so productive? It receives the antenna over the things blocking the signal. Let us say your Pc is sitting on your desk and your Wi-Fi router is a number of rooms over.

The metal shielding in the computer itself can mess with the sign (which is why desktop PCs have exterior Wi-Fi antennas). The steel shielding in your laptop keep track of doesn’t aid, either. Even your physique absorbs some sign if you’re among the antenna and the router. All the things else concerning the antenna and the router also dampens the sign and, in our homes, the greater part of all that “stuff” is about desk top.

So if your router is on a aspect desk in the living home and your computer is on your desk across the household, there is a total whole lot of waist-height junk involving the two antennas.

Basically unscrewing the antennas off the back again of your Laptop, attaching extension cables, and then screwing the current antenna into extension cables can support you get the antennas up and absent from the radio-blocking stuff.

The relationship points on Wi-Fi antennas are standardized and use a link format referred to as SMA (SubMiniature variation A)—it appears to be like a ton like a tiny miniature variation of the coax cables you use for your cable box simply because which is particularly what it is.

You can use a 3-foot extension to get it on top of the Personal computer situation or a very little up the wall, or even a 10-foot extension to get it all the way to the ceiling.

You can even change the existing antenna with this extension + foundation for a more handy way to position the antenna large up on the top of your situation or a close by shelf.

If you’re applying a USB Wi-Fi dongle, you can use the exact trick. You can use your existing Wi-Fi dongle and pair it with a higher-excellent USB cable. They even make USB extensions particularly for ideal dongle-mounting—which isn’t a phrase you get to use each day—that placement the dongle in a vertical orientation on a little stand.

Or, in particular if your unique USB dongle is a bit aged and out of day, you could decide to acquire a new Wi-Fi USB dongle that features the extension like the TP-Backlink Archer TX20U or the ASUS USB-AX56, both of those of which help Wi-FI 6.

Having said that you approach the challenge, even though, the purpose is to get the Wi-Fi antenna larger than your laptop or computer and greater positioned to get a direct “line of sight” shot at your Wi-Fi router with small things blocking the signal.