Windows 7 Strange Happening With Laptop and TV

wilhelm1

Well-Known Member
Sitting in my Living Room Laptop on Lap and turned on the Sunday Night Football Game Ravens/Steelers.
Was watching on Baltimore Channel 11, when I turned on the Laptop, my signal went away thought nothing of
it until I turned off the LT and the game came back on. Do not have cable, getting my TV over the air. Fortunately
I live half way between DC and Baltimore and was able to tune in Channel 4 out of DC and watch the game and
play with the LT. Anyone ever deal with this or is my setup the only one that does that? Win7, makes no diff. whether I am using Explorer or Chrome.
 
If your TV is using one of those digital antennas, some of those use the old 2.4GHz band, which is most likely what frequency band your laptop is running if you have a wireless router using 802.11g or 802.11n. If you have a router or a DSL modem/router or CABLE modem/router combo unit, that might also be using g or n band as well. Unless your modem/router or standalone wireless router specifically has dual-band capability such as the new 802.11ac routers with MIMO can operate either at 2.4GHz or 5GHz, in some cases such as the $300 router jobs can operate in dual-band mode; which means you can have multiple mobile devices operating at both frequencies simultaneously, if you don't have one of these high-end routers, and especially if you have a ISP-supplied modem/router combo unit, many of these are single band only Wi-Fi (2.4GHz band only).

There are multiple issues here, especially with older laptops, but in houses and apartments today many other devices share 2.4GHz band such as microwaves, smart TVs, Xboxes, and cordless digital telephones (for use with land-line calls). 2.4GHz band also only has like 24 channels available, whereas the new 5GHz band has like 168 channels available. Lots more channels available on the 5GHz band means that communications between your mobile device *laptop in your case* and your combo router or wireless router means a lot less contention with old-style 2.4GHz devices and even some new 5GHz devices.

You might do some research here, but my guess sounds like your laptop, unless it's <1 year old most likely has g or n Wi-Fi and can only operate at 2.4GHz band only. Even if your Wi-Fi combo box or router has n-dual-band or ac and has 5GHz capability, your laptop can't make use of it, since the WLAN adapter card/chip inside of it can only use radio band of 2.4GHz to communicate with your router. That's no Bueno if your Digital Antenna or box is also using 2.4GHz to operate. It's likely they are running into each other on one of the limited 24 channels. Other devices mentioned in your home or your neighbors appliances can also suck up those channels, until you run out and your devices crash into one another, and with only 1 or 2 open channels, when one device more device is turned on, your last channel has been used and it stops working until you turn off 1 of these devices and open up a free channel.

You can think of it like this: you have 2 cars and a 2-car garage. Your garage starts out empty (no cars are parked in there), you pull in 1 car, and now you only have room for 1 more car *the 2nd car*. You now have a guest show up who wants to park their new sports car in your garage to protect it from snow/rain/elements, but there is no more room. You have to remove 1 car from your garage, one of your normal 2 cars parked in their, at least temporarily until your guest can park his sports car in there. Once your guest leaves, and removes his sports car from your garage, it has 1 free parking space which you can now use for the 2nd car that your normally have parked in their. This analogy may help you here.

The mobile devices in your home including your laptop are like the existing cars you have in the garage scenario, and the Digital Antenna could be the equivalent of your guest's sports car--when your laptop is off, it's like having 1 free parking space available in your garage--as soon as you park your guest's sports car in the garage you take up that parking space, leaving your 2nd car *the laptop* no room to park in the garage and it has to spend the night out at the curb somewhere!:dejection:

I suggest you check your existing devices specs; if you threw away the paperwork you can google them online and get their specs and operating bands. If either your combo router or your Wi-Fi router does have n-dual-band or ac; and it then has 5GHz band capability, you have to check the built-in WLAN capability in your laptop. You can go to the manufacturer's website, such as dell or hp and download your laptop User Manual to find out what you have, but as I said, unless that laptop is brand new it's unlikely to support 5GHz Wi-Fi capability. If your router supports 5GHz even in stand-alone mode, you can simply purchase an external USB n-dual-band or ac plug in adapter for your laptop; making sure to disable the built-in WLAN chip/card in the laptop's BIOS. Doing this, should resolve the problem, as this will allow your laptop to communicate over the 5GHz band with the 168 channels to search for and not run into either your Digital Antenna (suspected culprit), or any other devices. You didn't mention whether or not you happened to be making popcorn or heating up a TV dinner in the micro while you were watching the football game and using your lappy. But, again, another reason to look at your Wi-Fi and all the specs of the above-mentioned devices and applicances in your household. It could be that your micro while cooking the popcorn or heating up your TV dinner could be the culprit knocking your lappy off the Wi-Fi network!

Make sure to get a high-quality USB adapter such as Cisco/Linksys or Netgear for this test on your laptop, as they cost about $40-$45US on Amazon. If you find that your combo router or Wi-Fi standalone router has no 5GHz capability at all, then you'd have to replace this box or add one of the newer Wi-Fi routers *as mentioned* that can run 5GHz, about $175 or so, and then add the external USB adapter to your laptop so it can communicate with the new router at the 5GHz band; this should eliminate the interference from your Digital Antenna.:up: Hopefully!

Let us know how it goes.:encouragement:
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
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