Question Unable to connect to home wi-fi on desktop computer

[Kiwi87]

TL;DR: Why won't my wi-fi see my home network, and good affordable USB wifi dongle suggestions are appreciated.

Hi all,

I have an Asus RT-AC1200HP home router i use for something less than 10 devices, with occasional streaming on my TV (which is off most of the time, and I don't believe is part of the problem).

I'm running a custom build with an AMD A10 with 24GB of Corsair vengeance DDR3 and a GTX 1050Ti. OS is Win10 up to date per windows. When I bought the computer second hand, there was an wireless pcie card, that I ended up selling, because I don't do much gaming that requires an active connection, and bought a cheap panda wireless PAU05. Initially it worked wonders, and I never had any issues. I also had an old WRT54G until a few months ago.

The problem I'm having is intermittent issues where the wi-fi is not seeing my home network, even though I have it broadcasting SSID. My Panda dongle is recognizing my neighbour's wi-fi and I'm currently typing this while using the hotspot on my phone. So I can verify the dongle does work in some situations.

I can also verify the wireless works for every other device in the house, and never has a problem like this.

I've restarted multiple times, checked for updates, uninstalled and reinstalled the driver, disabled and re-enabled, and tried different USB ports on my computer.

I'll be using my hotspot here to find me a new wireless dongle soon, but I was hoping someone might be able to verify if they've had similar issues with Panda and/or Asus routers.
Any recommendations for some affordable wifi dongles. Currently a hardwire connection isn't really an issue, since I can't put a wire through the wall and I'm in a different room.

Thanks again in advance!

 

[Lutfij]

Are you on the latest BIOS for your motherboard(speaking of which, you forgot to mention it in your specs) and are you on the latest chipset drivers? You might want to also see if your router has any firmware updates pending. Then you can try and disconnect all other devices from your router to see if the desktop is picked up. I've had a couple of routers that didn't like more than a specific number of devices until it began to drop connections or fail at seeing more than the specified devices.

 

[Kiwi87]

I am on the latest bios. I even went and downloaded it so I could flash the bios in case it was corrupted. Still having an issue. I'm on an A88x-pro motherboard.

I bought another USB wifi dongle because it was less than $8 and I have some school stuff to do, so I can't wait for the pci e to come in. It won't work either.

I'm starting to think it's a windows issue, since both of these driver installs failed, then I downloaded the most recent Realtek ethernet driver and it failed to install. The driver installs are timing out when I use windows device manager to install, and not installing properly when using the disk or downloading from the website (which is a hassle, because now I have to transfer them from my phone since the drivers completely stopped working)

I'm going to start up in safe mode and see if I can install the drivers successfully there.

Also, when I opened the forum on my phone I wasn't originally logged in and I couldn't see my post in the forum, I had to go click on the email link I received. Can you tell me why that's happening? Because I would love to get some input from others as well.

Thanks!

 

[jsmithepa]

I bought another USB wifi dongle because it was less than $8

I wager that's your problem. Get something you can attach an antenna to.

Yeah yeah, $8, plug&play tinny unobtrusive thing no panacea.

 

[Kiwi87]

I wager that's your problem. Get something you can attach an antenna to.

Yeah yeah, $8, plug&play tinny unobtrusive thing no panacea.

I didn't mention it here yet, but I ordered a pci wireless card. I just need to get some stuff done for school.

It might have been the original device, but as I mentioned, having a new device out of package with a driver install issue, as well as the ethernet install problem pointed me away from the actual devices.

After lots of hardware checking and asking all my friends and coworkers of they had an extra socket AM2+ mb, I finally decided to repair windows - and it works.

So now I get to reinstall everything, but at least I can finish this class I'm in.

 

[colonelcorto]

That WRT54G is old and 2.4 GHz only butbhas pretty good range. I have one I flashed with custom firmware and use it as bridge. You new equipment is probably dual band. How far are you from the router? Is your $8 WiFi adapter dual band? If your router is on 5Ghz only and your WiFi adapter is 2.4 GHz only it’s not going to work.