PC Issues Following Upgrade to BT Infinity
andyrr
Posts: 1,822
Bit of a ramble here but I'd appreciate some advice here ...
My father runs a PC of around maybe 8 years old, Windows XP SP3, 1Gb RAM, can't remember the rest of the spec.
Speed is generally fine for what he does - email and general internet use.
Last month he was offered an ugrade to BT Infinity for no extra cost which he said yes to - I don't know the details but I doubt he was particularly interested in any fantastic speed claims as overall he is more concerned by
a consistantly reliable connection.
Engineer was to visit on 28th December and I, as technical expert (!) had to be present as he knows zilch.
Pre-visit email indicated that the PC might have to move as the new router (BT Home Hub 5) needed to be beside the master phone socket whilst the existing setup had an extension cable to the upstairs where the router sat beside the PC. Email also indicated that a cable of up to 30 metres could be run.
Dad and I discussed this and the existing location was the much preferred option but if forced then PC could go downstairs, but not to the master phone socket room.
BT Engineer came and told us that he didn't have time to run a cable from master socket to the upstairs (would necessitate drilling through brick walls) and his recommendation was to use switch to the PC connecting wirelessly and advised buying a USB adaptor from Maplin/local PC store. I did that whilst engineer was present - bought what was the best one that the shop had at the time, 300mbps.
http://www.silicon-edinburgh.co.uk/prod ... -nwu285v2/
Installation of the adaptor was straightforward although Windows did report that the installation failed however I think that's because it doesn't like the driver that came on the supplied CD. The adaptor DID work, in fact whilst the engineer was present we got a very good for the WiFi connection (4/5 on the signal strength graph) and checking with something like BT iplayer episode it looked good.
BUT
I decided, just when the engineer left, to reboot the router, just to check what would happen so I could be prepared for any actions I or my Dad would need to take were this event to ever occur instead of me having to faff around or try to talk him into the same over the phone.
I did that and then found that the WiFi adaptor wouldn't connect to the router and I had to disable and re-enable it, just clicking on renew IP didn't work.
It did then seem ok but the speed I was then getting was only 2 or 3 / 5 and web pages were pretty slow to come up.
I took the decision to move the PC closer to the router so carted it downstairs - end result was an improvement in the WiFi signal to 3 or 4 / 5 ie good / very good.
I do know that WiFi signals are pretty variable with lots of things impacting upon them, house is a fairly solidly build brick house with solid wooden doors so getting a better signal would mean moving the PC even closer to the router -
that isn't really desirable here.
Som it's now working ok but I do think that the connection quality/speed is still lower than before so this upgrade to fantastic Infinity has, here, resulted in decrease not increase in quality.
Alongside the WiFi signal issue itself there are now 2 issues, 1 of which may or may not be related :
1) On 2 occasions the PC has hung totally with no applications running other than the screensaver. Had to force the PC to shutdown on the power button.
2) On rebooting the PC the WiFi adaptor will not always be recognised. I've resolved once by rebooting again and another time before trying that I totally removed then re-adding the adaptor.
Currently the WiFi speed via the adaptor is only 7mpbs. I tried it using my netbook the other day and with that adaptor installed it also only gets 7mbps. When I used the internal netbook wifi I got 10 mbps.
The router has ethernet connections and I tried my netbook with a network cable - a nice 100mbps.
Running a network cable betwixt router and PC is not really a go-er I don't think we'd need to get the drill out to enlargen some holes in walls and make 1 or 2 new ones and then we'd have to run relatively thick network cable, as opposed to skinny phone cable.
I've looked at mains network adaptors - guy at work pointed me to a pair on Amazon for around £22.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-PA21 ... r+internet
I sent an email to BT detailing our issue and how we are now in a worse position than before due to being forced to run WiFi. I had hoped (I think it was a little speculative) that BT would get an engineer out to run a cable between the rooms but their response was just some info on what you can do if your Wifi signal is poor.
I'd appreciate some suggestions on how we might achieve a better setup here - I don't mind spending a little bit of money, so, for example the mains adaptors mentioned above, are fine but good a reliable signal is more important than massive speed.
I'm not sure if the particular WiFi adaptor itself could be contributing to the problem : is there one that this relatively aged PC might be happier with and would one with a higher speed, above the 300mbps one, help ?
My father runs a PC of around maybe 8 years old, Windows XP SP3, 1Gb RAM, can't remember the rest of the spec.
Speed is generally fine for what he does - email and general internet use.
Last month he was offered an ugrade to BT Infinity for no extra cost which he said yes to - I don't know the details but I doubt he was particularly interested in any fantastic speed claims as overall he is more concerned by
a consistantly reliable connection.
Engineer was to visit on 28th December and I, as technical expert (!) had to be present as he knows zilch.
Pre-visit email indicated that the PC might have to move as the new router (BT Home Hub 5) needed to be beside the master phone socket whilst the existing setup had an extension cable to the upstairs where the router sat beside the PC. Email also indicated that a cable of up to 30 metres could be run.
Dad and I discussed this and the existing location was the much preferred option but if forced then PC could go downstairs, but not to the master phone socket room.
BT Engineer came and told us that he didn't have time to run a cable from master socket to the upstairs (would necessitate drilling through brick walls) and his recommendation was to use switch to the PC connecting wirelessly and advised buying a USB adaptor from Maplin/local PC store. I did that whilst engineer was present - bought what was the best one that the shop had at the time, 300mbps.
http://www.silicon-edinburgh.co.uk/prod ... -nwu285v2/
Installation of the adaptor was straightforward although Windows did report that the installation failed however I think that's because it doesn't like the driver that came on the supplied CD. The adaptor DID work, in fact whilst the engineer was present we got a very good for the WiFi connection (4/5 on the signal strength graph) and checking with something like BT iplayer episode it looked good.
BUT
I decided, just when the engineer left, to reboot the router, just to check what would happen so I could be prepared for any actions I or my Dad would need to take were this event to ever occur instead of me having to faff around or try to talk him into the same over the phone.
I did that and then found that the WiFi adaptor wouldn't connect to the router and I had to disable and re-enable it, just clicking on renew IP didn't work.
It did then seem ok but the speed I was then getting was only 2 or 3 / 5 and web pages were pretty slow to come up.
I took the decision to move the PC closer to the router so carted it downstairs - end result was an improvement in the WiFi signal to 3 or 4 / 5 ie good / very good.
I do know that WiFi signals are pretty variable with lots of things impacting upon them, house is a fairly solidly build brick house with solid wooden doors so getting a better signal would mean moving the PC even closer to the router -
that isn't really desirable here.
Som it's now working ok but I do think that the connection quality/speed is still lower than before so this upgrade to fantastic Infinity has, here, resulted in decrease not increase in quality.
Alongside the WiFi signal issue itself there are now 2 issues, 1 of which may or may not be related :
1) On 2 occasions the PC has hung totally with no applications running other than the screensaver. Had to force the PC to shutdown on the power button.
2) On rebooting the PC the WiFi adaptor will not always be recognised. I've resolved once by rebooting again and another time before trying that I totally removed then re-adding the adaptor.
Currently the WiFi speed via the adaptor is only 7mpbs. I tried it using my netbook the other day and with that adaptor installed it also only gets 7mbps. When I used the internal netbook wifi I got 10 mbps.
The router has ethernet connections and I tried my netbook with a network cable - a nice 100mbps.
Running a network cable betwixt router and PC is not really a go-er I don't think we'd need to get the drill out to enlargen some holes in walls and make 1 or 2 new ones and then we'd have to run relatively thick network cable, as opposed to skinny phone cable.
I've looked at mains network adaptors - guy at work pointed me to a pair on Amazon for around £22.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-PA21 ... r+internet
I sent an email to BT detailing our issue and how we are now in a worse position than before due to being forced to run WiFi. I had hoped (I think it was a little speculative) that BT would get an engineer out to run a cable between the rooms but their response was just some info on what you can do if your Wifi signal is poor.
I'd appreciate some suggestions on how we might achieve a better setup here - I don't mind spending a little bit of money, so, for example the mains adaptors mentioned above, are fine but good a reliable signal is more important than massive speed.
I'm not sure if the particular WiFi adaptor itself could be contributing to the problem : is there one that this relatively aged PC might be happier with and would one with a higher speed, above the 300mbps one, help ?
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Comments
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my immediate fix would be to buy a very long ethernet cable and trail it round the house to where he wants to use it.. Trying to make the wireless system work perfectly with very old kit might involve some very long and potentially expensive conversations with experts ( I am not an expert, just a normal bloke).
When bt fixed our extra phone socket many years ago the fitter nailed wire inside up and down and around to a hole then literally right round the outside of the house in the most startling display of ''this is how it has to be done''. I wondered if he was selling wire to bt.Raleigh Eclipse, , Dahon Jetstream XP, Raleigh Banana, Dawes super galaxy, Raleigh Clubman
http://s189.photobucket.com/albums/z122 ... =slideshow0 -
Houses do sometimes have faraday cages that block wifi signals - it's a PITA, but there's usually a way around it.
My parents house has one of these rooms - unfortunately it's where Dad wants his PC - but fortunately the house had air ducts (original central "heating" system) so we could just run a cat5 cable up one of these to the offending room.
For you - first thing to do would be to check the wifi signal in the house - I use an android with Wifi Analyser - but a laptop with similar software could work.
You may find that you can move the BT infinity hub by a small amount to get a better signal elsewhere.
If you can get a reasonable signal in the desired location then a USB wifi adapter may work ok - but it could be better if you put that on a USB extension cable and away from the back of the PC.
Failing that, you're either into cabling cat5, wifi repeaters, wifi bridges or mains lan extenders - all work - the most reliable is cat5 but often not the most convenient. WiFi bridges are ok - I use a netgear model - WN2000RPT - because I need to extend the Cat5 connection, not the wifi signal (I have printers & an old mac that doesn't have wifi)0 -
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
If this doesn't work, this might be a good solution (I use similar to get round the faraday issue)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-Powerline-500-Mbps-Nano/dp/B0081G3494/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_3Insert bike here:0 -
Certainly a wired connection has tested (using my own netbook) at a lovely 100mbps speed and I'd not predict any issues that would cause problems were it made permanent for my Dad however concealing the cable is really something we'd want to do and it had looked as if it would entail drilling into brick wall.
I've had a further search now - I hadn't previously been aware of flat cable - 20 or, at most, 30 metres would be sufficient and if I can make up an RJ45 end then I think that the work required to have an unobtrusive run may be relatively small as there are places that a flat cable would eliminate the need for a new hole to be drilled and should be more flexible for running down the sides of doorframes etc.
I might also have a shot at moving the router - the cable supplied is around 2 - 3 metres and that might enable it, for example, to have a straighter signal path to the wifi adaptor. I think however that a wifi connection might still be the less desirable as the occasional lack of recognition between PC and adaptor plus possible cause of the PC hanging, could give rise to a very frustrated user (my Dad is not a patient person !) and that is likely to then lead to 10pm phone calls for me to try and diagnose why my Dad cannot send his urgent email.0 -
USB wifi adaptors if windows xp compatible should work fine. Try downloading the latest driver off the manufacturers website. Your best bet is the adaptors that use your internal wiring you linked to. That way you get full speed with no interference and no extra cables running round the house.0
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BT will not conceal any wiring,it's policy,this is why engineers run cables out side of the house so you the customer do not have to see any internal wiring !!!
And of course a hard wired extension socket will be a much better option than WiFi extenders both for signal strength and connectivity.Cervelo S5 Ultegra Di2.0 -
Just buy two TPlink 200Mbps powerline adapters. Don't expect to get much more than 40mbps over them though. If you've gone for Infinity 2 then go for the 500Mbps version... A good Infinity2 connection if you are close to the cabinet can give more speed than a 200Mbps powerline adapter can do in practice (78mbps theortical Max on Infinity 2, I get about 68-74mpbs but the 200Mpbs ones topped out at about 37-38mbps, whereas the 500mbps manage the lot.... if you are on Infinity 1 then the highest speed available so happens to be about identical to what you can transfer over the 200mbps adaptors by fluke).
In my house I run a powerline adaptor to each of 4 rooms, in fact, the only thing plugged into the Router is a powerline adaptor. Each room has it's powerline adaptor running into a Switch where each rooms devices are connected, about 20 things in total.
Other problems you may have with the computer.... well, if the machine has never been reformatted and is 8 years old and been hammered, upgrade the OS, go to Windows 7 or 8 and completely reformat it.
By the way, if the distance is not too great then with a home hub 5 a Wireless N card should give you the possibility of all the speed of the Infinity 2 with no bottleneck. My Macbook Air here that I am typing this on shifts the full 74mbps from the Homehub 5 with no problem at all.0 -
Assuming you don't go down the powerline route, then look at why the router/wifi was fine before you power cycled it? has it lost its config? gone faulty and now running 802/b. It delivers poor speed even on another (your notebook wifi) machine, yes?
the pc issue will be a driver one (it worked fine before?), maybe reinstall from cd or as said b4 from website.
the upgrade of OS will bring you a load of headaches, loss of installed programmes or reinstall if you ve original cd's, driver issues and a lot of time restoring user files etc, its a last resort.
try ccleaner and ms security essentials first, if your not running this free ms anti virus already.0 -
mamba80 wrote:the upgrade of OS will bring you a load of headaches, loss of installed programmes or reinstall if you ve original cd's, driver issues and a lot of time restoring user files etc, its a last resort.
try ccleaner and ms security essentials first, if your not running this free ms anti virus already.
There'll be a lot more headaches after April 8th, when MS ends support for XP, including security updates. Time for a new OS, or a new PC - 8 years is a pretty good run.0 -
RDW wrote:mamba80 wrote:the upgrade of OS will bring you a load of headaches, loss of installed programmes or reinstall if you ve original cd's, driver issues and a lot of time restoring user files etc, its a last resort.
try ccleaner and ms security essentials first, if your not running this free ms anti virus already.
There'll be a lot more headaches after April 8th, when MS ends support for XP, including security updates. Time for a new OS, or a new PC - 8 years is a pretty good run.
yes yes but its not what the op asked or enquired about, he s got a wifi issue, changing his pc or going to win 8 isn't going to change that... remember, his notebook gets a pxxx poor speed too and im assuming that isn't running xp.
Diving in and changing OS even if the PC hardware will support win8, is just asking for trouble right now, sort out the BB/wifi issues and then maybe look at a new PC - you make it sound as if on April 8th his PC will suddenly stop working, which is far from true - do you work for PC World ?0 -
Hadn't realised that support for XP would end so soon but unless there becomes some requirement to upgrade the PC because of that then I don't see a new PC being in the offing just yet.
I think what I will do next is to see how practical it is to have a cable run from router to PC - normal round ethernet cable isn't the best given the route it needs to take but flat cable might be that bit easier. Failing that then I think the options are :
Trying to significantly improve the wifi signal, maybe by repositioning the router slightly (not sure how long a cable it will be happy with - std is around 2 metres ?), I think continuing with a wifi connection is not the preferred option since it appears to potentially have the issues of causing PC to hang plus not always being recognised on PC startup.
or
Installing a pair or the power adaptors.
Have got some food for thought now, will see what improvements I can achieve now.0 -
mamba80 wrote:Diving in and changing OS even if the PC hardware will support win8, is just asking for trouble right now, sort out the BB/wifi issues and then maybe look at a new PC - you make it sound as if on April 8th his PC will suddenly stop working, which is far from true - do you work for PC World ?
Hopefully the network issues can be sorted out well before April (!), but the end of support is something everyone running XP needs to think about. It'll be open season on XP machines when the patches dry up - every time MS releases a security update for Vista etc., there'll be plenty of bad guys analysing the vulnerability to see if it applies to XP and writing an exploit to incorporate into their malware. I wouldn't want to use an XP PC for anything important like online banking or shopping with a credit card after the deadline, and backups will be even more important than usual (ready for when the next version of Cryptolocker ransoms your files). Updating the OS on a machine old enough to be running XP probably isn't cost effective, though. A new £250 PC (or one of those reconditioned recent Dells with Windows 7 you seen on Amazon for under £150) would probably be a better bet.0 -
Scaremongering!
Most ppl would be shocked to learn that I still run Win95 & Win98 machines at work.
Sat behind a suitable firewall & with either antivirus or a sensible user the chances of being hacked are minimal.
Backups are important - especially for older machines as hard drives do fail.
Quite simply.
1) make sure your AV is up to date (for XP and above - Microsoft Security Essentials from microsoft.com is free)
2) don't ever follow links from emails - especially if they appear to be from a bank or other online payment facility (only exception I make to that is when I'm resetting a password and the received email has been anticipated)
3) be sensible in your browsing - whilst sites can be hijacked and viruses embedded, it is unusual. Keep to major websites and you'll be safer.0 -
Regardless of whether an upgrade or a new pc is on your wish list or even necessary, its pointless, like many threads they just gravitate towards stuff the op has never asked about or desires.
Im just waiting for someone to demand i fit a new gas central heating system for my hot water plumbing question on here
MSE updates is also stopping for XP which is a shame but there are plenty of other freeware AV out there and as slowbike says just be careful what you open or visit, regardless of which OS0 -
Well the BT engineer who was to visit following the initial installation did so early this morning - was there by 8am which I don't think was expected. He was, I'd believed, to investigate a couple of line-related issues that the original engineer did not have time to resolve but the end result was that by the time my Dad put this guy on the phone to me at work he was about to install 2 mains adaptors to resolve the connection related issues.
I'd actually been on the phone to my Dad last night as he couldn't get an internet connection despite, what I could determine over the phone, the wireless connection being made and the router being in it's normal state (just the blue light). No change after a reboot. I hung up last night resigned to the fact that I was going to have to fiddle with things when I visited this evening but it seems that BT have done about all that might might have hoped other than running a direct wired ethernet cable but that was going to be a bit of a PITA anyway and possibly over and above what we could have expected them to do.
Hopefully that's it all resolved now and it will remain a nice stable and fairly speedy connection.0 -
Why is everyone ignoring this? It did work therefore it should work again. Have you checked for cross-channel interference from another router or device in the vicinity using the same channel? Did you accidentally flip the little stub aerial over and it's no longer sending a signal in the general direction of the PC? Think of the stub aerial as emitting a huge doughnut shaped signal - does the doughnut hit the PC? Try going into Windows wireless network settings and toggling between allowing Windows to manage your wifi connection, and using the device driver (the software to configure the wifi, supplied by the manufacturer). In the past with XP I've seen similar issues that disappeared when going from Windows to manufacturer's s/w or back. It's a checkbox, somewhere on the Windows config pane.andyrr wrote:The adaptor DID work, in fact whilst the engineer was present we got a very good for the WiFi connection (4/5 on the signal strength graph) and checking with something like BT iplayer episode it looked good.
If it did work it should work again. No need to buy a new PC, or rewire the house, not at this stage.0 -
CiB wrote:
Why is everyone ignoring this? It did work therefore it should work again. Have you checked for cross-channel interference from another router or device in the vicinity using the same channel? Did you accidentally flip the little stub aerial over and it's no longer sending a signal in the general direction of the PC? Think of the stub aerial as emitting a huge doughnut shaped signal - does the doughnut hit the PC? Try going into Windows wireless network settings and toggling between allowing Windows to manage your wifi connection, and using the device driver (the software to configure the wifi, supplied by the manufacturer). In the past with XP I've seen similar issues that disappeared when going from Windows to manufacturer's s/w or back. It's a checkbox, somewhere on the Windows config pane.andyrr wrote:The adaptor DID work, in fact whilst the engineer was present we got a very good for the WiFi connection (4/5 on the signal strength graph) and checking with something like BT iplayer episode it looked good.
If it did work it should work again. No need to buy a new PC, or rewire the house, not at this stage.
Yes, it has bugged me a little that apparently prior to my reboot of the router it worked ok but as of earlier today the wifi connection has been swapped for a wired connection via mains adaptors by BT themselves.
The router, a BT Home Hub 5, has no aerial and all I did to it was to unplug and plug back in
The issue as much, or more than the connection speed itself, is the requirement for a reliable connection and that is as much the wireless dongle behaving as near 100% of the time as possible as whatever the connection speed it achieved. Twice I've seen the adaptor not achieving communication with the PC and twice also the PC had hung at the screensaver (even Caps lock wouldn't active the keyboard light) - maybe that was unconnected but generally the PC does behave itself.
It does seem that at no cost or effort to me and my Dad the enforced wifi connection has been switched back to a wired (via mains wiring) one so hopefully that's going to be less problematic.0
