Hi Ragnarok,
Yeah, I see a lot of this on my own home Wi-Fi network. I have one Customer who has 27 Wi-Fi connected devices to his $300 top-of-the line Netgear Nighthawk router I bought for him. He has a 6100 sq.ft. 3-story home; so I know those challenges better than you do.
This includes only 1 full-time W10 desktop PC (wireless), a bunch of macbooks, ipads, iphones, and other stuff his family and guests use including Android phones/tablets/laptops, which several have older versions of windows 7/8x. And he has a multi-floor entertainment system all state-of-the-art with Sonos speakers throughout the home on all 3 floors and the garage, gym, pool room, etc. etc.
Some things you might look at, are that if you are doing multiple versions of Windows; to make sure you use
Homegroups. Without it you get lots of quirky network things I won't go into here, but as neem intimated those have little to do with Microsoft issues. Rather, there are lots of us old school techs who refuse to use Homegroups, and want to do everything from the command line or file explorer in their network setups. This is silly IMO. If there are easier ways, and MS is putting it out there, especially in new versions of W10, why not use it? The answer is, there are still people out there trying to run home networks with things like W95 or even WFW3.11 and they have a cobbled-together mess with lots of outdated OSes as well as hardware older than 10 years old that drives new OSes like W10 nuts because the drivers were end-of-lifed 10, 15, 20 years ago and they refuse to accept it. Hopefully, you are not one of these people.
First, make a physical survey of all your Wi-Fi connected devices for you and your family members who live in your home. Smartphones, Xbox360, TVs, desktops, laptops, smartphones (both Android and iPhone) and any other devices that EVER use your Router for Internet access. You need to make sure that each and every one of them is using 802.11n or 802.11ac. If any are not using those chips or cards; chances are they are hindering the class-b node from circulating around your LAN network. If you don't know what this is, don't worry, none but the best trained expert network engineers know about it. It's been very well documented for several years, yet people ignore it or don't know how to find out what wireless spec each of their devices use. This is really really important.
Second, you should download the Wi-Fi analytics program onto a laptop/tablet/smartphone you have and wander throughout your home and check your signal strength in both dbm and signal strength percentage. It helps to draw a picture of your home on a scratch pad and mark locations with device names/types on it and their signal strength. This is a poor-man's network diagram for Wi-Fi only. This will assist you in solving your problem. If you haven't done this, you are using haphazard methodology, which is not how we licensed network engineers do things. If you don't want to pay a pro like me $500-$1,000 to come out to your place and do it, and you want to DIY; consider doing this. It will really illuminate your problem(s) like you wouldn't believe!!
Last, if you have any spots in your home that are not getting 60% signal strength or a minimum of -70dbm or better; you have gaps in your radio coverage from your Wi-Fi router and you have 2 choices. First it to get a stronger router, with a better radio signal and range as you already have surmised. Second, if that's not an option, you'll need to purchase high-quality range extenders to cover those weak spots in your home (due to building materials using base metals such as lead, aluminum, steel, etc.) and things like fire-walls. These are radio signal killers and if you have that kind of construction; especially if your home is over 50 years old; you will need a stronger router or range extenders or possibly both to solve your problems.
An example of a high-quality Range extender I use in my home and my Customer's homes is here:
Amazon.com: NETGEAR N600 WiFi Range Extender (WN3500RP): Computers & Accessories These can go up to $150 each or higher; some are $400 each, so that's why it's important to do the above surveys and research all your devices wireless capabilities
EXACTLY. And another reason we charge so much to fix these kinds of problems in peoples homes or small office businesses.
Can't say this will fix everything, but if you don't have a network diagram of your home wireless setup, you will never solve these intermittent problems and can just continue blaming Microsoft for a poorly devised home network forever.
Try some of these things, and hopefully you'll get some improvements. Maybe Windows11 will be better unless MS skips straight to Windows21 or something.
<<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>>
