For the past few weeks my wireless connection has been driving me nuts! About every 15 seconds my connection will drop for about 7 seconds. So, if I’m browsing the net I have to pause and wait for 7 seconds every 15 seconds for a page to load. You can imagine how crazy this was making me. Here is how I troubleshot and fixed the problem:

1. Only my desktop was having this problem, my laptop was receiving the wireless fine. This means it was a problem with my computer or its wireless card, not my router.

2. I only started to notice this over the past few weeks, yet this computer worked fine wirelessly for a while before that (what have I done in the past few weeks that may have caused this problem?)

3. I then downloaded and updated to my wireless card’s latest driver version. This is a good idea to do when troubleshooting just in case your problem is widely-known and has been fixed by an update. In my case, this didn’t work.

4. I had an idea of what was happening, but to be sure I started to look at some monitoring tools to view what my connection was actually doing (see picture below). What I saw was exactly what I had imagined–consistent rises and drops in my connection every so often. It was like a heart beat.

5. Because this pattern was so consistent I knew it was some sort of interference. Like a heart beat, electronic devices send out repetitive signals to look for information being sent to them–like saying “hey, is anyone there?” every so often. So, what devices could be interrupting my signal that are new or have been changed within the past 3 weeks? Hmmm…

6. After thinking long and hard about what other devices send out these types of “is anyone there?” messages (infrared, cell phone, blue.. BLUETOOTH!!) I finally found my problem device. I have a Bluetooth USB dongle that I had recently moved from the USB port on the front of my computer to one of the USB ports in the back of my computer. I quickly disabled my Bluetooth connection and Viola! my wireless connection went back to normal. By moving the bluetooth device to the back of my computer, I was moving it right beside my wireless card, so every time that my Bluetooth device would ask “is anyone there?” it would interrupt my wireless card. When it was done speaking, it would allow my wireless card talk again. This happened over and over again until I finally told Mr. Bluetooth to shut up. See, electronics have personalities too! Now, I’ll have to move Mr. Bluetooth back to his old residence, since he obviously can’t play nice with others.

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