Your internet isn't working properly

Two minutes of diagnosis

Does another device work? Pick up your phone and use the same Wi-Fi. If the phone is fine and the computer isn't, the computer is the problem. The router and your connection are both working. If nothing works, stop looking at the computer.

Does a cable help? If ethernet works and Wi-Fi doesn't, that's a wireless problem specifically. If neither works, the connection itself is down.

Is it location-dependent? Fine next to the router, poor at the far end of the house, means coverage rather than fault. That's a layout and hardware problem, not something to fix on the computer.

Is it time-dependent? Slow every evening is usually congestion: either your provider's network or everyone in the house streaming at once.

If it's only your computer

• Restart it. Genuinely fixes a large share of network faults.
• Forget the network and rejoin with the password fresh.
• Turn off Wi-Fi power saving. Device Manager → your wireless adapter → Power Management → untick "allow the computer to turn off this device". This one causes a lot of mysterious drops on laptops.
• Update the wireless driver. A common cause after a Windows update.
• Check it's not in airplane mode or that a physical wireless switch hasn't been knocked.

Most of these we can do over remote support at $85/hr: assuming you can get online at all, even briefly, or via a phone hotspot.

If everything on the network is affected

• Restart the router properly. Off for a full 30 seconds, not a quick toggle. Then wait a couple of minutes before judging.
• Check for an outage on your provider's app or status page before spending an evening on it.
• Check the cables at the wall and the back of the router.
• Consider the router's age. Anything past about five years struggles with a modern number of connected devices, and provider-supplied units are rarely generous.

Coverage problems need someone there

Dead spots, drops in specific rooms, weak signal upstairs or in a garage or shop. These can't be diagnosed remotely, because the problem is the physical relationship between your router, your building and the interference around it.

That's what on-site service at $130/hr is for. We can find where the signal actually fails and fix it properly rather than guessing at extenders.

Businesses

If your network is business-critical, a connection that drops intermittently is worth solving properly rather than restarting daily. Managed IT from $100 per user per month includes network monitoring, which catches degradation before it becomes an outage.

Work through it yourself

Our free troubleshooter asks a few questions and narrows down the likely cause, then gives you steps to try. At the end you can copy the summary, email it, or share the link with your own technician or a family member. Nothing to install, and no email required.