Fix for Wifi Adapter not working - no WiFi

A WiFi Fix Without Rebooting PC

By Strictly Software

I just woke up again on my laptop at 5am, and the keyboard had all changed, I noticed as I went onto YouTube to post a video onto Twitter about the US Government wanting to spy on everyone's text messages and stop any that contain mis-information. 

Now if the US does it then you can be sure the UK GOV will follow as we are already halfway down that slippery wedge towards dystopia. The UK is already becoming a police state using COVID as the cover to implement draconian laws as everyone is worrying about this or that variant and whether or not to get a vaccine just to get a passport that will control your social life, and allow total monitoring of your activities by the Government. 

You can watch the video below about the invasion of US citizens privacy here. What happens in the US usually comes to the UK soon after but when it comes to mass surveillance the NSA like to use GCHQ to test their Prism algorithms and mass home population surveillance techniques out on 1st before using it back home. 

Why? Well because we don't have a real written down constitution or Bill of Rights that protect citizen freedoms is the main reason. The 2nd is our constant desire to be bed buddies with the US, in our "Special Relationship", and keep them sweet by being useful to them, hoping for a share in their data gathering techniques.

I noticed the keyboard change when I went to put a hash tag in and got a | pipe instead and the " quotes were an @ sign. So I did the quick fix I outlined from the other night > "Quick Fix To Keyboard Layout Change"

However I was trying to tweet this out from YouTube to Twitter. Twitters site was up, and I kept pressing "Tweet" but it kept responding with a "There is a problem, try again" message after 20 seconds of non activity.

It was obviously using AJAX as the page didn't refresh, but a quick ping to Twitter.com came back with no server response. It was then I noticed that somehow my WiFi had gone, saying my connection to my router was weak.

Sites that use AJAX for everything, especially posting, should really be able to tell if you are online or not as the reason for a post not appearing. 

Rather than freaking out someone as the site is still on the screen, and most of the API is in JavaScript so you can still hit buttons and get the impression you are online. There must be a load of ways that after 3 failed post attempts or even 1, that an AJAX API could tell you that you were no longer online in a message.

A method that when you press the button sees if you can remotely access a site that is always up, for instance, would be easy. Then the error message could notify you that you are offline. If they just did a FORM submission when posting Tweets instead of using AJAX you would instantly know anyway from the "No Internet Access" page your web browser would bring up.

So once I had found out that I could not PING Twitter, I checked my Wi-Fi status and it said I had a weak connection to my router. 

Now before I did the keyboard fix, I was online and everything was okay, so I don't know if somehow that quick hot key fix could somehow cause your Wi-Fi adapter to fail, but the two actions seem causally linked. 

So I went to the built in Windows "Troubleshoot Problems" wizard you get when you click on your WiFi symbol in your Desk Tray to run a diagnostic test that clears the DNS, resets your router and adapter and then tries to ping an outside site to see if you have Internet connectivity restored again or a problem accessing the Internet.

I was getting back 3 error messages saying I was offline, my RealTek Wi-Fi adapter was not working, and a default Wi-Fi adapter message, The wizards cure for the problem was to use Ethernet cables but I am not linking loads of cables together just to get round this simple problem.

Usually at first I just try to turn Flight Mode on/off and see if that changes the number of Wi-Fi routers that appear in my list. 

If it doesn't and I turn Wi-Fi on/off and that still doesn't show my router then one way to fix it is to just log out and log back in again - or reboot if you want to.

However a quicker fix I have found to this commonly occurring RealTek (HP) laptop Wi-Fi adapter problem is to first go to the Device Manager app, under the Windows key, bottom left corner.

I then just go to the Network Adapters section and a load will pop up, if the RealTek Wireless LAN is out of action, usually a red cross will appear next to it. 

In this screenshot I had already fixed it so I wasn't going to try and break it again on purpose just to get a real screenshot. However a red cross next to the adapter having problems is usually the sign you need to double click that adapter and open the menu for it.

I usually try both the "Update Driver Software" and "Scan for hardware changes" options to see which one fixes it but usually one does. It is a lot easier than having to save all your work, remember which files were open, and reboot your laptop.

After fixing the adapter in Device Manager I always run another diagnostic test to ensure there is no other problems but usually my Wi-Fi is instantly restored as the router comes back online and the adapter connects to it.

I always finish off with a quick ping to the site I was on to ensure even though I am online they are too but you can easily skip this step.

And hey ho, I am back online, not banned from Twitter which was on of my 1st thoughts when they couldn't post a Tweet and give me an "offline" status error message. 

However that is the problem with sites that are full of API Jizz, they use it so much they cannot even show you the simplest message at times when all you need to know is that you are offline.

I hope the fix for the keyboard change is not related to the Wi-Fi adapter change but it could be somehow, it's just odd how I was online with a wrong keyboard layout, then I did the quick fix to reset it and then became offline. 

If anyone knows any reason the two might be connected please let me know.

Thanks.....

By Strictly Software

© 2021 Strictly Software

Chome and FireFox really getting on my tits....

Chome and FireFox really getting on my tits....

By Strictly-Software.com

Chome and FireFox really getting on my tits....

Chrome was by browser of choice, due to being light weight and fast.

FireFox was in 2nd place due to the range of plugins available.

I had relegated IE into usage only to test code for cross browser compatibility issues.

However I am finding that I am actually using Internet Explorer more and more due to constant issues with both of the latest versions of these browsers.

I am running Chrome: 50.0.2661.75 (64-bit) And FireFox 46.0 buld no: 20160421124000 (64 bit) on all 3 of my machines (Win7 & Win 8.1)

There was a stage when both these honey's were humming like a bees. I even put up some articles on how to improve the speed on both browsers:

Speeding Up Chrome Can Kill It
Speeding up Google Chrome with DNS Pre-Fetching
Performance Tuning FireFox

I also put up a general PC and Browser tune up article with free tools, command line prompts and some basic things to try if you had a slow computer: Speeding up your PC and Internet connection.

However I have even found myself using IE 11 more and more due to constant hanging, pages not loading at all with the "processing request" message in the footer, or waiting for some 3rd party non asynchronous loaded in script, to download and run that blocks the site or page from running.

I think there is a far too much "API JIZZ" in the community at the moment.

What this means is that developers, due to their nature to impress and gold plate code, even when the spec doesn't call for it, are now using so many 3rd party and remotely hosted plugins like jQuery, Google Graphs, tracker code, plus loads of funky looking CPU consuming widgets to make their pages look good.

You only have go into Facebook or G+ and try and write a message. Not only will Google Plus's new post box move around the page before you can start writing, but both websites are constantly analysing your keystrokes to find out if the previous string matches a contact, community or page, in your contact book for them to link to.

The more people and pages you have stored the slower this process becomes. Yes is might be handy but why not just require a symbol like + in Google+ to be put before the person name so that the code only checks that word for a relation.

Imagine having a list of thousands of pages, liked communities/pages and contacts to be constantly checked on every keydown press with AJAX requests. That is overkill. It slows down systems .

I still have two windows from Chrome spinning away for (Google Blogger blogs) at the moment. There is not much 3rd party code on these pages but they are having trouble and showing common "Waiting for Cache" and "Processing Request" messages in the status bar.

This is the same sort of thing I get in FireFox. Although in this browser, what kills me is just the slowness of getting from page to page. On many sites I have to refresh it multiple times before the code all loads and this goes for online banking to online betting sites. Just trying to watch a race on their Flash screens is a nightmare.

I had a bet on a horse the other day on Bet365.com just so I could watch the big race with an unbeaten in 11 straight wins, Douvan, running. However Bet365.com video didn't start and in SkyBet it was stuttery and kept losing picture and sound. I missed the end of one race where a horse I had backed jumped the last fence into the lead but when the picture came back it had finished 3rd!

They keep telling me to clear the cache, reboot the router and do speed tests. Things I have done many times. I have 54Mbps download speed at work and 28Mbps at home. I can stream 4k UHD TV to multiple screens so download speed is not the issue something else is.

Speedof.me is the best online speed testing site I have found as it as it uses no extra files and is ran in pure HTML5 with no Flash, Java or ActiveX type objects requiring to be loaded for it to run.

What is causing the problem I have no idea as my broadband speed seems okay. I suspect it's the large number of reverse proxies being used and the download of shared 3rd party scripts and widgets that can hang due to a large number of HTTP requests.

I tried deleting my userdata file for Google by searching for it in the address bar of Windows Explore with this line: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data 

I have also tried disabling Flash as so many times I see the "An object has crashed" bar in the header that is related to the Flash Container object failing. Sometimes a reload works other times it doesn't.

However so many sites STILL use Flash it is hard to live without it really. For example the WHOLE of Bet365.com is made in Flash which makes it very user unfriendly and hard to use with sticky scrollbars and issues with selection of items.

If anyone has similar issues or ideas on resolving them let me know, as I never thought I would be going back to IE to use as my main browser!

By Strictly-Software.com

©2016 Strictly-Software.com

Speeding up Chrome can KILL IT!

Speeding up Chrome can kill it!

By Strictly-Software

Lately I have been really disappointed with the performance of my preferred browser Chrome.

I moved from FireFox to Chrome when the amount of plugins on FireFox made it too slow to work with however this was when Chrome was a clean, fast browser. Now it has just as many plugins available to install as FireFox and the performance has deteriorated constantly over the past few versions.

I am a developer so having 20+ tabs open in my browser is not unusual however when they are all hanging for no reason with "resolving host" messages in the status bar something is wrong.

I have even removed all my plugins that I had installed and decided to leave that to FireFox if I need to test different agents, hacking and so on. However even with a simple install the performance has been crap lately!

Therefore looked up on the web for tips on speeding up Chrome and found this article:

http://digiwonk.wonderhowto.com/how-to/10-speed-hacks-thatll-make-google-chrome-blazing-fast-your-computer-0155989/

It basically tells you some tricks to speed up Chrome by modifying some settings by going to chrome://flags/ in your address bar.

There is a warning at the top of the page that says:

WARNING These experimental features may change, break or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. Jokes aside, your browser may delete all your data or your security and privacy could be compromised in unexpected ways. Any experiments that you enable will be enabled for all users of this browser. Please proceed with caution. Interested in cool new Chrome features? Try our beta channel at chrome.com/beta.

So these are all "experimental" features and from the sounds of it they could even make it's security and performance worse not better. Even a few of the tweaks suggested by the article had already disappeared from the settings page.

I did what was still available and a few more tweaks after careful consideration and what happened?

Well at first some pages seemed to load quicker but then I found that:

• Some sites without a www. sub domain wouldn't load.
• Some pages wouldn't load at all.
• When I came into work today even though a Chrome process was running with 0 CPU usage nothing was displayed.

I had to re-boot, and try 3 times to open Chrome before getting back to the chrome://flags/  page and restoring all the defaults. Since then everything has been okay.

So if your going to tweak be careful - it could take down your whole browser!

The best way to speed it up is to remove all the plugins and add-ons and leave that to FireFox. Turn off 3rd party cookies and any 3rd party services that involve constant lookups and try to keep it clean and simple.

It seems that with the over usage of AJAX and sites like Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+ where as you type it constantly looks up the word to see if it matches a name or contact that this "API JIZZ" as I call it has really slowed down the web.

Just by having Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn open at the same time can eat up your memory and I'm on a quad core 64 bit machine.

In my opinion there should be settings to enable you to turn off the API JIZZ and flashy features that rely on lots of JavaScript and AJAX.

It slows down your computer and is not needed most of the time. Having big database lookups on each keystroke is obviously going to use up lots of memory so it should be an option you can disable.

Anyway that's down to the developers of all these social sites who seem to love AJAX for everything. A simple submit button would do in a lot of cases!

Why I hate the new Google+ API

I absolutely hate the new Google+ API

Yes Google+ have had a revamp and if you are not on it then you won't know what the old version was like if you now join.

To me it's as if someone has read too many books on the jQuery effects library and basically orgasmed code across the API.

If you go to type a new status message into a box the whole page shifts round so that your box moves to the centre of the screen and the rest of the messages and segments of the page do a little jig around it so that you are supposed to go "wow".

Not me. Too much API Jizz is something I hate. 

Not only does it repeatedly turn my PC into a helicopter as the CPU rises and falls like a coke head on the lash but it just is too much for my ageing eyes.

It really seems to me as if someone is showing off by writing their "funky" API code. Hey boss look what I can do with a shit load of JavaScript that takes ages for all the page segments to load but makes non techies go "oooh" as they see it in action.

Whilst an API should be friendly and easy to use there is nothing "useful" about the whole screen moving around just so your current type box is in the middle of the screen.

Why not just put the "new message" box in the middle to start with?

Not only that but the amount of times I go to reply to a conversation down the right hand side and someone I have never seen before pops up in a box on top of the place I am trying to write is beyond annoying.

It means not only can I hit the send button but sometimes if I can find a way to get rid of the annoying box (and that's not 100% of the time) the message I was writing disappears!

I know writing the whole page in JavaScript stops (or limits script kiddy's) from scraping easily but there really is a limit. Personally I just think Google+ have crossed it and that there was nothing too wrong with their old API.

What do you think?