Why is the wi-fi signal meter on my Windows 7 laptop changing all of the time?

Question

The signal strength meter on my Windows 7 laptop keeps changing from two to four bars of strength and back again. It's starting to look like a peak meter from a 1980's stereo. The machine isn't being moved and it's plugged in for power.

If we assume that the meter is accurate (that the machine is seeing a 50% loss in power then getting it back repeatedly) then why is it happening?

Is there some sort of power saving feature turning down the signal on the laptop or should I start shopping for a new router?

Answer 1

There's a whole bunch of environmental factors that could be influencing this. Your dog moving around in your house, for example, or the electrical supply to your boiler fluctuating, or a butterfly flapping its wings a few thousand miles away, etc etc.

Unless you're actually having problems as a result of this (e.g. you should be in range of the router but you're only getting an intermittent signal), I'd just get used to ignoring the exact meter on your desktop.

Answer 2

I would make sure you have installed the correct Windows 7 driver, as there have been lists of problems about wifi, which are solved by installing the correct driver

Answer 3

Another possible source of problem is some other wireless device either near the router or the laptop interfering with the signal. I used to have a wireless phone sitting near my router and it took me weeks to figure out that it was interfering with the router's signals.

Answer 4

You can update the device driver and work around with wifi hardware options in device manager, maybe disable power saving, enable aggressive roaming and also you can change the default channel id both on your laptop and the wireless router, keep it away from interfering devices and big metal surfaces and objects as they emit the signal.