Wifi problems on SWMBO's Windows 10 laptop

Yes they are. In terms of music files they are still relatively crude devices with all sorts of connectivity and stabilty issues. In a few years we'll laugh at what we used to go through to manage our music on computers. 

Just done a bit more online research.  I know that there is a wifi connectivity problem with Windows 10 upgrades, but SWMBO's laptop has been OK with wifi for a few weeks now, and this problem has arrived de novo.  I did remove the old VPN drivers before erasing and reformatting her hard drive not long after she did the upgrade, as her computer had become rather slow and unreliable (not recognising USB sticks etc)

I'll have to try the solution suggested (basically editing the Registry and removing old VPN drivers if they have somehow managed to get reinstalled) tomorrow, but am not hopeful.

Try using a separate unmanaged switch to separate out your wired internal network traffic, they are much simpler and tend to 'just work'.

Broadband routers usually have all sorts of odd extraneous stuff like firewalls that can do odd things like tying up the router's processor.  These additional functions can slow down with time as additional rules get added and other settings get changed away from optimal.  This can sometimes account for why a reset speeds things up again.

Thanks Huge.  It would appear that my NAS drives are connected via the router, but to fix that would require getting the engineer back to re-route the cables.  To explain : router in living room, has 4 GB ports.  One goes to a seven port Netgear Switch.  The others immediately go into a conduit and up to my study.  Of these, one runs to a 5 port Netgear Switch, which supplies my Mac, NDS and various other odds and sods.  The other 2 continue in a conduit through the wall into the adjacent bedroom where the NAS drives live.  (didn't want them in the same room as the NDS system).

That's the first time I've had this slowing down problem.  The Mac slow Finder problem has always been there, and is a known problem for many. (check the Apple Forums)

As regards SWMBO's laptop?  Well, I did the Command Line bit and deleted the suggested registry, and she has her wifi back.  Don't know why she suddenly had this problem.  Perhaps Windows 10 had an update which caused it?   I'll try to persuade her (again) that she'd be better off with an iPad for what she actually does, especially as she is a one-finger typist, but am not holding out any hopes of succeeding.  (sigh)

Since the ports of your router are only ever connected via switches (none of your devices are connected to the router directly) then the network traffic side of the router (i.e. the switch side of the router) cannot have been the problem.

Without knowing your router config I can't know what happened and what changed when you did a a full factory reset of the router, but here is a possibility...

Could your DHCP setup have got out of sync?

Multiple devices with the same IP address on a network can cause all sorts of problems, and a full reset of the router would force a network wide refresh (as the DHCP server would have been re-initialised).

The Win10 WiFi problem could also have been caused by a piece of application software, either due to an incompatibility with Win10 or via a bug.  Maybe an application claimed it could speed up her computer and would she like it to do it?  Maybe her anti-virus offered to increase her security?  Unfortunately there's soooo many possibilities!

As the Mac issue, I don't use Macs, I find it difficult to work with their habit of hiding the details, as this makes it much harder to diagnose faults (I'm a computer techie).

Interesting   .....  but .....

.....  I'm not convinced this is a Win-10 issue or that its only because of non-standard settings on the BT router

I've got a Dell,  it came with Win-8.1 & is upgraded to Win-10

My wireless is 101% OK,  its instant, by the time the screen has come on its already connected. 

Her Ladyship also has a Dell, its about 3 years old & came with Win-7 & its also now on Win-10, its wireless connection has always been slow, but compared to the old Dell I had at the time it was no different so we were not too concerned. Compared to my new PC we now know her wireless is slow to load, it does get a connection, but takes 30 seconds or more to make it.

My PC see's & displays my own router & its WiFi-X & FON & the one (nearest) neighbour. 

Mrs-Mike's PC see's the whole neighbourhood - I too can see them all with my wifi detector app, but my PC does not,  seems like it has a low signal strength detector/rejecter.

My PC has an Intel Dual Band wireless adapter,  Mrs-Mike's adaptor is a Dell adapter & I have a feeling this is the difference in my case.   

My BT-4 has a number of non-standard settings including fixed wireless channels on both 2.4gHz & 5gHz & static IP addresses,  it works perfectly for me,  however if what you've done has fixed the problem = great.

The Windows 10 wifi problem was solved by double checking that old VPN software had been deleted, and then editing the registry to make sure.  The details of how to do this are easily available via the web.

SWMBO doesn't really understand computers, and as I have said in other threads, I take her laptop away from her every couple of weeks and remove adware etc, which she keeps managing to reinstall!  I might add that she always expects me to drop everything and sort it out for her whenever she has a problem. 

I know what you mean about Macs.  I moved from PCs to the iMac because of various problems, and because I wanted a larger screen than my Windows laptop, which makes it much easier to use Sibelius Music Notation software (IMO), but I didn't want to have my Windows laptop connected to an external screen, or go back to banging my knees on a Windows Box sticking out of the front of my desk.  The iMac does have the advantage of a small desktop footprint.

Overall I've been far from impressed with the so-called greater ease of use of Macs, and the fact that Safari (Mac Browser) sometimes seems to stall when downloading a webpage.  This has sometimes been so bad as to require restarting the Mac.

However, I am becoming quite adept at solving Mac problems (which have been many, especially since the advent of El Crapitan (no, that isn't a typo), but then again I am not very impressed with Windows 10 either so far..

Well, last night SWMBO's laptop decided to lose it's wifi again, and this time even her ethernet connection was flaky.  On my iMac at about the same time, it was very slow while trying to access a webpage via Safari, then Safari window changed to show a message from BT saying 'no broadband connection'.  This resolved after a while. (a couple of minutes?)

Tried to access the Hub's homepage, but it wouldn't accept the admin password!  Yes, I did double/treble check that I was entering the correct one and that I hadn't inadvertently switched on CAPS LOCK!

To solve it all this morning, I had to do ANOTHER factory reset of the hub (to get back access to my admin password), and then redo the registry edit bit on her Windows 10 laptop.

I'll give it a day, and if the problems persist I shall probably be chasing BT for a replacement Home Hub 5.   This reminds me of why I went from a Home Hub 3 to Netgear N600 3 years ago.

What really annoyed me above everything else, was having to go through the 'smart' setup routine on the homehub again from every device (iPhone, etc) using its wifi, and had to reset the link for the Netgear Wifi extender.

Hugo said

"(I'm a computer techie)."

and yet you are not at home with Unix or it's derivatives - shame

Are you refering to me?

I learnt to use use Unix on a SCO system about 25 years ago when I was a systems programmer and system admin.  My NAS runs a version of Linux, and I use Ubuntu in a VM.  Just because I dislike the Apple corruption of the Unix concept doesn't mean that I'm averse to Unices (and functionally related systems like Linux) as a whole: they have their place.