Windows 8 sucks! Should I upgrade to 10?

[InfernalSurge]

Hi, I've recently built my first PC and my experience on Windows 8 is ANYTHING but smooth. Yesterday, I encountered this problem where Windows 8 would just not connect to my damn wifi and it says my network is limited. Bull**** I've found a fix, but Windows now LOCKS UP FOR 20 SECONDS EVERY TIME I CLICK ON A WEBSITE! My question is, is Windows 10 good in its current state? In what ways is it better/worse than 8? Thanks in advance.

 

[Funky Ducky]

This is likely not an issue with Windows 8, but rather with your build either hardware side or software side.

 

[Matteo De Vellis]

Hi, I've recently built my first PC and my experience on Windows 8 is ANYTHING but smooth. Yesterday, I encountered this problem where my Windows 8 would just not connect to my damn wifi and it says my network is limited. Bull**** I've found a fix, but Windows now LOCKS UP FOR 20 SECONDS EVERY TIME I CLICK ON A WEBSITE! My question is, is Windows 10 good in its current state? In what ways is it better/worse than 8? Thanks in advance.

Holy Sh*t that thing with the wifi happens to you too? I upgraded and I have no complaints except for one thing, Windows 10 drivers for Nvidia GPUs dont work properly, I couldnt run games like Minecraft with shaders.

 

[cdabc123]

windows 10 has some issues but the interface is better then 8 so its easier to fix your problems

 

[basroil]

Hi, I've recently built my first PC and my experience on Windows 8 is ANYTHING but smooth. Yesterday, I encountered this problem where my Windows 8 would just not connect to my damn wifi and it says my network is limited. Bull**** I've found a fix, but Windows now LOCKS UP FOR 20 SECONDS EVERY TIME I CLICK ON A WEBSITE! My question is, is Windows 10 good in its current state? In what ways is it better/worse than 8? Thanks in advance.

This is very clearly not a Windows 8 issue.
Here are some possible issues:
1) You did not build your computer properly, causing the CPU to throttle and otherwise cause issues
2) Your drivers are not properly installed. Installing the proper Windows 8 drivers will help
3) Your wifi never really worked (at 100%) to begin with and you have malware installed already
4) The install was corrupted for some reason, using sfc /scannow to check may uncover issues.

Whether you upgrade or not is up to you, but unless the issue was an OS corruption, you'll have the same problems.

 

[velo3100]

I have a feeling that it is most likely that you don't have the latest drivers or that you have a virus.

If this is not the case, then win 10 is better than 8 but be prepared to wait for a few days till windows get all the updates for all the drivers sorted for you pc. It takes a long time and there are still bugs in it so it is not perfect.

But in my opinion win 10 is a huge improvement to 8 but worse than 7 due to reliability.

 

[johnbl]

window 8.x provided default drivers but expected you to go and find current 3rd party driver updates for your OEM drivers. (touch pads, USB 3.0 chipsets, SD card reader, audio devices, GPU devices, Ethernet drivers including wifi drivers) People just never realize they have to do this and end up with crappy drivers.

Windows 10 has a new round of updated OEM drivers to install as a default. They tend to work better but they also enable features that may have been disabled in the old drivers. Particularly sleep states. Just so many problems with older devices and old BIOS versions related to sleep functions. Windows 7 had them turned off by default, window 8 started to turn them on and just hit lots of problems.

For example on some wireless devices, they would go into a low power mode but not return to a high power mode. This means the transmit power to the wireless antenna would be reduced and the transmit range would be restricted. by a lot, (1/R^2 function), basically the local device could receive signals from the router but could not send to the router at the correct signal strength so it has to drop the signal rate very low. (you can turn off the low link power states (sleep mode) for the wireless device and it will start transmitting at full power after a reboot.
Windows 8 fault for this, nope, it would happen on windows 7 if you enable the feature. Then you would have found out the driver or the device logic was broken.

 

[InfernalSurge]

Thank you everyone for your replies. The reason I was absent from this thread is because my PC's wifi decided to completely kill itself. I wiped my SSD clean and reinstalled Windows 8, but reinstalling took me two days because Windows kept on giving me a "BCD needs repair" bs and wouldn't let Windows start, but I eventually fixed this. I don't have a virus either, this PC is only one month old and I ran Norton scan five times. Plus, I reinstalled Windows.

Now I'm 100% sure my hardware is functioning properly, my FX-8320 has been running at a stable 4.0 GHz overclock with Hyper 212 Evo for two weeks. My PC's wifi was working fine up until the past few days. After reinstalling Windows 8, my wifi speed was still really slow, and the download speed was around 0.30 mbps (don't remember upload speed). I've just power cycled my router and my download speed went up to 7 mbps. That still doesn't seem right though. On my old Mac, I'm getting 16 mbps using the same speedtest.net server. I really don't know why my PC's wifi is so slow now. I've updated my wifi adapter's driver to the newest version, as well as my motherboard chipset driver. What should I do now? My wifi adapter is an Asus PCE-N15.

 

[basroil]

Sounds like hardware failure then, if it's not user error that is.

First you should try changing the orientation of your antennas, especially if the line between the router and the antenna includes metal objects or water (i.e. PC case and you).

Also, online speed tests are unreliable, depending on far too many factors including internet use of other people. If you don't have a networked file-server, consider testing both devices in the same place at nearly the same time.

 

[InfernalSurge]

Sounds like hardware failure then, if it's not user error that is.

First you should try changing the orientation of your antennas, especially if the line between the router and the antenna includes metal objects or water (i.e. PC case and you).

Also, online speed tests are unreliable, depending on far too many factors including internet use of other people. If you don't have a networked file-server, consider testing both devices in the same place at nearly the same time.

Hm, I ran speedtest.net on my PC and old Mac at the same time and my Mac still has x2 faster download speed (the upload speeds are close). The wifi adapter antennas in the back of my PC are facing a wall, but my wifi speed was fine before. I'm really confused :/

 

[johnbl]

I would admin the route and block all devices except the asus wireless device and do your cable speed test again. I would also scan for other routers that are running on the same channel or within 3 channels range of the wireless channel you have selected. Most people use a default channel and other peoples routers can kill the thru put of your router if they conflict or overlap.
you can use tools like inSSIDer or xirrus wi fi inspector to see the routers your machine can see. I found that when my neighbor installed a high powered antenna, my bandwidth dropped to a fraction of what it was. I ended up upgrading my wireless to a dual band router and card and started using the 5 GHz band. (no one around me was using it) my speed went from 6 Mb/s to about 700Mb/s.
router was a tp-link archer c9, I used a intel dual band ac wireless ethernet adapter. I forget the model, something like 7260 from newegg.com for $28 (on sale at the time)
Intel has good drivers and they tend to update them for years. Looks like your driver was last updated in 2013. Intel makes the chip and the drivers, the asus device just used a 3rd party network chip, and you have to get the updated driver from the third party. (not a fun process)

Any way, try the two programs or look for another one to scan the wireless networks, check the signal strenths and channels that are in use. If you run at 2.4 GHz plan on interference with any signal that is within 3 channels from the one you use. Most will default to channel 6.

 

[InfernalSurge]

I would admin the route and block all devices except the asus wireless device and do your cable speed test again. I would also scan for other routers that are running on the same channel or within 3 channels range of the wireless channel you have selected. Most people use a default channel and other peoples routers can kill the thru put of your router if they conflict or overlap.
you can use tools like inSSIDer or xirrus wi fi inspector to see the routers your machine can see. I found that when my neighbor installed a high powered antenna, my bandwidth dropped to a fraction of what it was. I ended up upgrading my wireless to a dual band router and card and started using the 5 GHz band. (no one around me was using it) my speed went from 6 Mb/s to about 700Mb/s.
router was a tp-link archer c9, I used a intel dual band ac wireless ethernet adapter. I forget the model, something like 7260 from newegg.com for $28 (on sale at the time)
Intel has good drivers and they tend to update them for years. Looks like your driver was last updated in 2013. Intel makes the chip and the drivers, the asus device just used a 3rd party network chip, and you have to get the updated driver from the third party. (not a fun process)

Any way, try the two programs or look for another one to scan the wireless networks, check the signal strenths and channels that are in use. If you run at 2.4 GHz plan on interference with any signal that is within 3 channels from the one you use. Most will default to channel 6.

Thanks for the reply, I'll try the two programs. I've just noticed that I haven't installed any Windows 8 updates yet, do they help with wifi?

 

[basroil]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try the two programs. I've just noticed that I haven't installed any Windows 8 updates yet, do they help with wifi?

Not directly, but you should ALWAYS make sure your system is up to date on security and compatibility updates. It may very well be that your issues are due to that.

Looking over everything again though, I noticed that you have norton. Have you tried running the speed check with norton disabled? Their firewall and plugins tend to be a bit excessive and can cause network connection slowdowns (not just wifi, but all networking)

 

[InfernalSurge]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try the two programs. I've just noticed that I haven't installed any Windows 8 updates yet, do they help with wifi?

Not directly, but you should ALWAYS make sure your system is up to date on security and compatibility updates. It may very well be that your issues are due to that.

Looking over everything again though, I noticed that you have norton. Have you tried running the speed check with norton disabled? Their firewall and plugins tend to be a bit excessive and can cause network connection slowdowns (not just wifi, but all networking)

Alright, I'm installing the updates right now. I've never thought about Norton being the issue, I'll do a speed test with it disabled after the Windows updates.

 

[InfernalSurge]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try the two programs. I've just noticed that I haven't installed any Windows 8 updates yet, do they help with wifi?

Not directly, but you should ALWAYS make sure your system is up to date on security and compatibility updates. It may very well be that your issues are due to that.

Looking over everything again though, I noticed that you have norton. Have you tried running the speed check with norton disabled? Their firewall and plugins tend to be a bit excessive and can cause network connection slowdowns (not just wifi, but all networking)

My Windows updates are now applied but I didn't see any improvement 🙁 If anything, my speed is getting worse, around 5mbps download and 0.29 upload. I tried disabling Norton and the results haven't changed.

 

[basroil]

My Windows updates are now applied but I didn't see any improvement 🙁 If anything, my speed is getting worse, around 5mbps download and 0.29 upload. I tried disabling Norton and the results haven't changed.

That is likely just a coincidence due to your provider having less than optimal bandwidth for your specific area.

The only two options you have now are to move your computer and get a long ethernet cable to test whether it's the wifi device or the computer itself. If you are using this for gaming, you should be on ethernet anyway.

 

[InfernalSurge]

My Windows updates are now applied but I didn't see any improvement 🙁 If anything, my speed is getting worse, around 5mbps download and 0.29 upload. I tried disabling Norton and the results haven't changed.

That is likely just a coincidence due to your provider having less than optimal bandwidth for your specific area.

The only two options you have now are to move your computer and get a long ethernet cable to test whether it's the wifi device or the computer itself. If you are using this for gaming, you should be on ethernet anyway.

I take back what I said before, disabling Norton's firewall and Safe Web increased my dl speed from 4mpbs to 6.64 and dl from 0.29 to 0.45. Is it safe to have these settings disabled though? I'll try to hook up an Ethernet cable but i'd need a pretty long one. I still find it strange how my four year old Mac is getting 16 mpbs download and my PC is only getting 6.

 

[basroil]

I take back what I said before, disabling Norton's firewall and Safe Web increased my dl speed from 4mpbs to 6.64 and dl from 0.29 to 0.45. Is it safe to have these settings disabled though? I'll try to hook up an Ethernet cable but i'd need a pretty long one. I still find it strange how my four year old Mac is getting 16 mpbs download and my PC is only getting 6.

Again, those numbers are not statistically significant, you'll have to try several dozen times at different times of the day to make any judgement.

As for the difference in computers, I personally don't. You're using ~6 year old wireless tech by using 802.11n devices, so the speed differences should be proportional to signal strength and signal frequency.