Windows 10 (Home) Very Slow Internet Speeds (WiFi + Ethernet)

I have a custom gaming PC I built about 3 years ago. Nothing extraordinary. I have done some slight upgrades over the years (950 to 1060 6GB, PCI wireless card). The motherboard is not wireless capable, hence the PCI wireless card. I'd also like to state that I am far from illiterate when it comes to technology, so don't be afraid to use "big words," or correct terminology. If I don't know what something is, I can look it up.

Let's get down to business. I have an issue that seems to not have a solution. The issue is that I have very slow WiFi and ethernet on my PC. I've done countless hours of intense research on this issue to no avail. It seems the issue didn't start until ~1.5 years ago (yeah, I've been living off of a laptop since then because I could never find the problem), when I moved houses. Where I live now, satellite internet is the only "conventional" option; however, I found a solution to that by using a Nighthawk M1 mobile hotspot (on LTE, I chose this hotspot in particular because of the 4x carrier aggregation) as a modem connected to a wireless router. (I'll answer questions about that if anyone is interested). The speeds are great: 20mbps down/4mbps up when the towers are congested, 55mbps down/10mbps up at 1:00am when I should be asleep (I can play 8k video with ease on YouTube, just to give you a real-world example). In my home there are two laptops, multiple handheld devices, and my desktop PC. Every device has the aforementioned great speeds, except for the desktop. The desktop yields a ping of ~40 ms (which is average on all of my devices because it's technically an LTE connection distributed to my devices as WiFi), but the download speed is ~2mbps or less and the upload is nonexistent at ~300kbps or less. (ALL SPEEDTESTS ARE RUN USING SPEEDTEST.NET, but I've also tried other speedtest sites, such as speedof.me, with no improvement). I've tried every "easy trick" I can find and I've also tried more advanced methods, with absolutely zero luck. I'm sure it's not an issue with the wireless card because I receive the same slow speeds when connected via ethernet. Before you say it: *Yes, I have checked my running programs and processes to ensure nothing is hogging the bandwidth.* Actually, when I first start up the PC everything starts downloading updates. All of the tasks (trying to download updates) combined never go above ~3mbps (proof that the issue isn't isolated to a specific program).

I believe the driver I'm using for the wireless card is the Windows 10 default, but I may be mistaken. Here is a link to the available drivers for my specific motherboard: ASRock > H97M Pro4
If you can decipher which one is applicable to a wireless card I'd appreciate it.

I do understand that saying I have tried many things is a very broad statement, so even if you think I've already tried something, please still respond. Any and all help is appreciated greatly.

Caledon Ken said:

Hi McWillies. Welcome to the TenForums @McWillies

Lets start with the easy stuff. Who made your wireless card and what model is it? Then you can get proper driver.

If this has been a year and a half Window feature updates will be in process and they are huge. Please set your connection to metered for both connections types although I'm going to suggest you first work on ethernet standalone.

What version build of 10 are you on. Right click start, run, type winver, enter. It maybe an idea to use the media creation tool on another device to build a USB key that you can use to update this instance.

As well what edition are you using, would be handy if Pro to block all Window updates once instance is updated as you diagnose.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

It is a non destructive process but I always recommend baking up data.

What AV's are you using and have you tried just using Defender? Are you running any additional privacy tools or standalone firewalls.

Have you plugged a laptop into Ethernet cable and does it show expected speeds or is it also impeded. (Cable test)

If you look in the advance properties for your laptop ethernet driver (Properties, advance tab) for speed and duplexing are you using full duplex. Does this match (within reason) your desktop. (Think desktop may have gigabit speeds)

If you remove your wireless card and just use Ethernet what speed do you get on speedtest.net

Are you using the MS driver for your Ethernet or the one from Asrock?

I would use the one from Asrock. Should show provider as Intel with matching version number.

I'll start off by saying that I can't answer some of the questions you've posted here right now, but I will update this post when I get home and check for everything you've asked about.

Wireless card manufacturer - Aukey. Model unknown right now.

I made sure Windows updates were not being downloaded when I conducted the speed tests and I have tried setting the WiFi connection as metered, no change. Unfortunately, my PC is too far away from my router to be able to connect via ethernet. As I said, I have a Nighthawk M1 connected to LTE. When I was setting up my wireless network configuration I used the desktop to connect to the M1 via ethernet (had to disable WiFi on the M1, so I needed the ethernet connection to access the web interface), that's when I ran the speedtests via ethernet on the desktop and had slow speeds.

Current build version - Unknown at this time.
Edition - Home (it's in the thread title )

AV- I have AVG anti-virus on the desktop. I have tried running speed tests with it disabled and only Windows Defender active, no luck.

Laptop/Cable test - I have connected the laptop via ethernet to the router and got normal speeds (not slow). The same cable is being used right now to connect the M1 to my router, so I know it's not a cable issue.

Laptop ethernet driver - The laptop doesn't have an ethernet port. I recently purchased a USB-C to ethernet adapter and used that during the speed tests. My desktop does have gigabit ethernet.

Removing wireless card - As I said, testing ethernet on the desktop unfortunately isn't an option.

Ethernet driver - I'll look into it. I believe I'm using the MS driver, it didn't give me any issues in the first ~1.5 years.

Download http://www.crewetown.co.uk/wireless.exe right click and choose run as administrator post results this will give us all the information. I would leave media creation tool for now as a new version of Windows is out any day now and it's possible it could solve your problem

The massive October update is out upgrade now see if it solves the problem Download Windows 10

Samuria said:

Download http://www.crewetown.co.uk/wireless.exe right click and choose run as administrator post results this will give us all the information. I would leave media creation tool for now as a new version of Windows is out any day now and it's possible it could solve your problem

Attached the plain text file to this post. There's probably some personal information I should delete from it, but I really don't feel like it right now.

Wireless card model - I suppose Aukey just uses Realtek boards and slaps their branding on it. Model is Realtek 8812AE.

Windows build version: Version 1709, Build 16299.125

Ken: Have 2.4GHz and 5GHz set up on my router, but I keep the desktop connected to the 2.4GHz band specifically for the distance factor.


What do y'all think of a system refresh? I haven't tried one yet and am not sure if it will actually help solve any issues. Just a thought.

You are miles behind with windows which wont help as everything is miles out of date including drivers do todays update Download Windows 10 it is in effect a refresh as it totally overwrites the whole system.

Disable ipv6 its not used
set dns to 1.1.1.1 & 1.0.0.1
Remove GyStation.exe
Your wireless is set to only n type on 2.4 but your card is AC that will slow it down n is 300 meg max ac is 3 gig max

The problem may all come from being over a year out of date with windows

Samuria said:

You are miles behind with windows which wont help as everything is miles out of date including drivers do todays update Download Windows 10 it is in effect a refresh as it totally overwrites the whole system.

Disable ipv6 its not used
set dns to 1.1.1.1 & 1.0.0.1
Remove GyStation.exe
Your wireless is set to only n type on 2.4 but your card is AC that will slow it down n is 300 meg max ac is 3 gig max

The problem may all come from being over a year out of date with windows

Downloading Windows updates on the PC as I type this, but the internet is extremely slow on it as I've already stated, so I'm not sure how long it will take. I can't use the 5GHz connection (Wireless-AC) because the signal isn't strong enough. 2.4GHz (Wireless-N) should be more than capable of handling a 20mbps connection. I'll do the other things after the updates I'm currently downloading install, then let you know how it went.