Very slow internet on Windows 10

Laptop with Intel i7, 8 GB ram, Fios internet 100/100
Came with Windows 8.1 and upgraded to W10 Home over a year ago.

Browsing the internet has become essentially impossible because of very slow download speeds.
Ethernet gets me download speeds of 102 - but wireless is 1.7 !!!!! (My old smartphone gets download speeds of 38+ !)
The network adapter is Realtek RTL8723AE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC
(see attached) and W10 says it has the latest driver. Because the laptop originally came with W 8.1 the manufacturer does not have any W10 drivers for this PC.

Things have slowed further to molasses since the last W 10 critical update (which also messed up my graphics driver).
I've searched the internet for solutions. None of them have worked for me.
- I've removed all background apps.
- I don't have peer to peer updates.
- Many unessential services are turned off or set to manual.
- I get regular Windows 10 updates and device manager does not show any yellow alarms.

Please, I need help to fix this. Pc is unusable!

The manufacturer of the wireless card doesnt have win 10 drivers? or the mfr of the laptop?

anyway, have you tried uninstalling the wireless card in device manager? then re-install. see if that works

perhaps something changed with your wireless router? check settings or reboot it

I uninstalled the wireless adapter and reinstalled it. Unfortunatelu no difference.

I went to the Realtek website to find a W10 driver for the Realtek RTL8723AE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC but could not find a driver. So I emailed their support to ask where I could download their W10 driver for this adapter.

I add another step after uninstalling onboard devices, reboot then let Windows find the hardware and reinstall the drivers. Rebooting removes anything held in memory/RAM to give a fresh start.

Thank you. Will do as you suggest.
I'm not sure this problem has a solution. There are several similar threads in tenforums and none seem to have solved it.

Rebooted after uninstalling the adapter. Again no improvement.
I thought I found the cause because for the first time I got this popup from Windows Defender (attached). I allowed access but as you can see there was no improvement in speed. Only on the W10 PC. I may be forced to go back to Windows 7 or 8.

are you sure your laptop is connecting to the router you think it is? maybe it's connecting to a neighbor's wifi. one time i was accessing internet through hot spot on my cell phone. forgot to turn off and later couldnt figure out why the slow wireless speeds. PC was connecting to it automatically.

running any VPNs or proxies?

It's connecting to my very unique ssid and I have no vpn and no viruses. I'm sure it is a W10 driver issue. My other pcs are pretty much all set up the same way except for the operating system being W10. I wish I had never upgraded to W10. That's when my troubles started and then got much worse with the latest update when it slowed to a crawl.

Edit: I wonder if there is some software that could diagnose what the wifi problem is. Troubleshoot finds nothing wrong.

Hey Curious,
You might try WifiInfoView - WifiInfoView - WiFi Scanner for Windows 10/7/8/Vista