Is my wireless adapter dying? Connection keeps dropping.

Woody1999

Admirable
Hiya all.

I've had this TP-Link N600 wireless adapter for a few years now (http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-WDN3200-N600-Wireless-Adapter/dp/B007SUYM72) and it has recently started playing up - ie dropping connection after a few minutes, or providing limited connectivity (no internet). It's only been happening on my PC, my iPad and my MacBook are working fine on the Wifi, not to mention everyone else seems to have no problems with it. I've also tried multiple USB ports on the computer, to no avail.

Is my wireless adapter dying? I can easily order a new and better PCIe adapter, but not spending money would be preferable. I'm saving up for an entirely new PC.

Also, my BT HomeHub 4 has dual band Wifi, and my adapter is supposedly a dual band model. However, whenever I tried to connect to the 5GHz band, it would automatically connect to the 2.4GHz band instead. This was happening before the adapter was playing up. Also, other devices such as my iPad and my MacBook only show the single connection - BTHub4-xxxx. Is this a problem with my adapter or with the router?

Woody

Edit: just tried using the wireless adapter with my MacBook, it doesn't light up nor is recognised by the laptop.
 
Definitely? I've noticed even slower download speeds than normal (around 4kB/s rather than 100kB/s) and updated all drivers. No changes. Also disabled and enabled the device in device manager.

Looks like I'll be ordering a new one then. Any suggestions? Got a budget up to £30.

Woody
 
Well that was silly. Apparently my motherboard is the only motherboard in the world with a single PCIe x16 slot and two PCI slots. So nowhere to install the Wifi card! I guess I should have checked before I bought it, but I expected it to have at least a single PCIe x1 slot!

I've returned it and ordered a TP-Link USB adapter - it's pretty bad but at least I'll have Wifi.

Woody