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How to Boost Wifi Signal on the Laptop: 21 Time-Tested Ways

Weak or no WiFi signal is usually a very irritating experience that can even test the calmest of people to make moves that may mean to destroy or do away with their router. Even though this has been a common phenomenon with the majority of internet users, there are various measures that one can take if your internet provider doesn’t offer any.

On the other hand, many of our modern laptops have inbuilt WiFi adaptors that don’t require any additional external hardware to connect. If your Laptop does not connect to a WiFi signal and misses the WiFi option, you need to check on your WiFi drivers and have them installed.

Various suggestions addressing this problem range from environmental, equipment, software, among many others, and apply to startups, small businesses, and even big companies.

Here are the Simple Tips to Boost Wifi Signal on the Laptop

Internet speed

It’s advisable first to do an internet speed test and get to know what speeds you have and thus inform what measure you pick to boost your Wi-Fi signal. Additionally, contact your provider and enquire about any service disruptions or scheduled maintenances and have them fixed at the foreset.

Update WiFi network drivers

Consider updating your WiFi drivers as one of the first steps to check your weak WiFi signal since a faulty or outdated driver may be the cause of this trouble.

Take these steps as follows:

• Windows + x and choose Device manager
• Select Network adapters
• Choose Wireless internet driver
• Right-click and update driver software
• Select Search automatically for updated software driver
• Restart your Laptop to finish this process
• Now go back and recheck the status of your WiFi signal

For users using USB WiFi adapters, it’s important also to have them updated for effective communication with your Laptop.

Power saving mode

Check your Laptop power plans to set the best mode for improved performance. The balanced mode is usually set automatically by the manufacturer, but if your Laptop is set to Power Save mode, this may adversely affect various components, including your WiFi signal and range.

WiFi Heat mapping software/tool

Mapping out your office, home, room, building helps you understand where your signal strength or coverage is strong and where it diminishes. Get some of these tools installed on your smartphone from Google Play and Apple Play store. This helps get rid of assumptions on where to set or relocate your access points by:

• Eliminating WiFi dead zones
• Take out the guesswork in managing your network
• Automating your WiFi network management process
• Professional management reports

Do a Reboot on your router

This step sounds easy, and yes, it does work! It’s commonly used on electronics and also works well for a WiFi router by clearing memory and also having updates installed. One can also schedule regular reboots to run automatically without the usual switching of “on” and “off.”

Reconfigure

Take this simple step by login to your router and get to the configuration menu. Follow all the steps and save your configurations, then redo a speed test to see any improvement on your WiFi speed.

Ensure you are using the latest WiFi technologies

There are routers out there that still use outdated technologies affecting their performance and thus providing low data rates. The newest technology standard for a route, wireless card, and network adapter is the 802.11ac , which uses the 5GHz frequency network and gives faster data rates reliably.

WiFi Mesh System

This is a system that involves the main router and connects to other nodes distributed in your office or house. This arrangement eliminates dead and weak Wi-Fi zones and maintains a reasonable range for your router.

Change Router Channel

Your new WiFi router may, with time, get its channels clogged by an increase in other WiFi routers around you. Various tools help analyze your WiFi spectrum and home network letting you choose less congested channels on your router.

Router Location and Distance

The location of your router dramatically affects its performance, and therefore it’s essential to have them placed in a centralized point and not behind items or near to the floor for good strength. If this is not possible, then one can consider bringing their laptop close to the WiFi router. In instances that the distance remains long, a WiFi speeder or addition of network adapter can be used to increase the signal range. These are usually plugged in power outlets and placed between your router and laptop.

Obstruction

Large structures, metals, and appliances between your router and Laptop affects your signal and is advisable to move your working area or router away from obstacles and if possible place it on an elevated position for optimal signal strength for your office or home WiFi.

Electromagnetic waves

Majority of household appliances emit electromagnetic waves to some extent, and they are found in almost every corner of a house. When these waves are close to your router, they affect the WiFi signal, and that’s why it should be placed far away and in a more centralized area.

External WiFi Adapter

External USB adapters are used for older laptop models that may be struggling to connect to a Wi-Fi signal and even in newer models to increase range since they have stronger antennas that have inbuilt adapters that act as signal booster for WiFi on your laptop.

Change transmission power

An increase in transmission power to the maximum possible gives the best WiFi signal possible. This is possible for many network adapters and is done by accessing the network adapter interface for adjustment of the power settings.

Turn off Eco Mode

The present-day wireless router offers different power-saving modes that help in bringing down energy consumption in our households and offices. By default, some of these routers may be set to Eco mode during the manufacturing process, and it’s important to have a check. Despite this acceptable approach, this setting reduces performance and considerably reduces bandwidth .

Long Range Router

A connection with a lot of simultaneously connected gadgets and electronics may get overwhelmed and have decreased transfer speed. To avoid this and accommodate more devices, one can acquire a long range router that cover significant areas comfortably to ensure you can use your laptop in all rooms and even outdoors.

Use stronger antennas

Majority of WiFi routers have relatively small antennas that are commensurate with their sizes and have lower antenna gain than those available on stores out there. There would be no harm in getting a bigger antenna with more antenna gain and thus significantly boost your WiFi signal for a seamless internet connection.

Router capacity

A low-end router can, at times, barely manage to handle big areas like offices with many WiFi users and connected equipment and devices. Acquiring a more powerful wireless router with a higher capacity will help solve this issue and reliably offer WiFi access to your Laptop.

Clean Up your Laptop

You may have had your laptop in use for a long time without doing a thorough tidying up, and this may turn out to be the cause of a slowdown, including even to your Wi-Fi signal. There may be programs and files that are not used anymore, and it’s only imperative to have them removed.

Bandwidth hoggers

When there several people and devices sharing a connection, it usually gets hard to control bandwidth use and allocation, and this affects what devices and programs to be prioritized. This can be solved by having set out times when devices that need more bandwidth allocation can work uninterrupted and vice versa. There are also tools and software out there that help with bandwidth allocation, and come handy in such situations.

Slow internet speed will cause everything you are doing to fail or stop. Videos will buffer, web pages won’t load, and programs will stop. To improve this, you need to contact your ISP and consider upgrading your 2.4 GHz bandwidth to a higher speed enabled frequency band.

Get rid of WiFi layabouts

It is important to know how many people are connected to your WiFi in a given moment by checking on your WiFi interface. Unauthorized connections may slow down your bandwidth at times, even without your knowledge, and significantly affects your work. It’s therefore advisable to have a strong password or even create a split-up guest wireless network.

Third-party firmware

With the installation of these firmware, WiFi routers gain capabilities of high-end devices that include scalability, improved security, bandwidth allocation, and general performance. These firmware that help improve WiFi speed on your Laptop include OpenWrt, Tomato, and DD-WRT.

Turn off Bluetooth

Your laptop’s Bluetooth and WiFi do share the same antenna and when both are activated at the same time may slow down your internet due to interference caused by sharing of the same transmission frequency 2.4Ghz. The use of an external USB Bluetooth receiver device solves this problem.

Wrong WiFi connection

This sounds weird, but it’s something bound to happen when you and your neighbours are on unsecured WiFi connections and probably using the same network names (SSIDs) on your networks. It might be had to notice this since most of the time, this will happen without your realization. As your neighbour switches off or disconnects their wireless network, this will always cause a temporal loss of wireless signal strength on your end as your laptop shifts back to your Wi-Fi connection.

Another problem that will cause trouble for you in this kind of mix-up is the fluctuation of bandwidth since your neighbour’s WiFi network might be on a different plan from yours, and this will considerably slow down your functioning, especially if it’s a lower 2.4 GHz bandwidth subscription. Open networks will also attract other unauthorized users who will overload your network and bring down your speeds. In an attempt to solve this problem, it is important to have your network secured with a strong password and also set your laptop not to pick and connect automatically to other available WiFi signals.

Use an old Wi-Fi router as an access point

Among the many ways you can apply to extend your WiFi range is the use of an old Wi-Fi router and converting it to an access point. This comes in handy, especially when you are not ready to spend a few coins in the purchase of a brand new signal booster WiFi device. The setup is quite easy, and you just need a spare power point and an Ethernet/in-wall cabling long enough to cover the distance to the intended new location of your router. Now that you’ve got that dead point covered, it’s advisable to set your router with different SSIDs and authorizations. This move avoids your laptop from jumping from one router to another and probably sticking to one router with low WiFi signal strength for a long period.

Hedayat S

Hedayat is the new Editor-in-Chief of Rottenwifi and has been writing about computer networking since 2012. Hedayat’s strong background in computer science helped him cement his position in the ever-expanding tech blogging world. As a network engineer, systems administrator, and systems analyst during his decade-long career in Information Technology, he has a passion for the internet & technology in his DNA.

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