How to increase laptop WIFI speed

wa8yxm wrote:

delwhjr wrote:
I had an HP Laptop that used that wireless adapter. It had many issues over its life and one was slow speeds. I replaced it with an external adapter and all was right with the world.

Am using an HP laptop Though it Wi-Fi's at 5 Gig.. The speedometer wrapped the needle round the pin when I plugged in a CAT 5 adapter and hard wired it.

Yeah, I prefer leaving all of my PCs hardwired when possible, much, much faster and reliable. The 5ghz Wifi specs boast of UP TO 1300 Mbps they often will never achieve a fraction of that.

It is hard to beat a hardwired Gigabit Ethernet card, but many buy laptops to not be "tethered" via a wire so I do understand why folks want the WiFi to work and work well.

OP needs to determine if they had a recent Windows update or a driver update happen. If the WiFi Radio has a newer driver then rolling back the driver may fix the problem. Alternately they can also search the Broadcom website to see if there is a driver with a different date and build to try..

Trying to update through Windows update often doesn't work, it will simply tell you that the driver is the "newest" and won't allow you to forcefully change it. Windows manages the drivers versions which makes it a real pain in the behind when it insists on using it's own broken drivers. To forcefully replace the driver it often takes a driver package which uses a installer.. Sometimes if you take the PC offline you might be able to switch drivers, but it is not guaranteed it will work.

Something else to consider, with many security updates, they are not 100% fully tested and as implied, security updates are designed to increase the security of your PC.. This sometimes leads to new issues with breaking things that used to work by not allowing (removing) or hiding certain security settings..