I recently built a new PC with an MSI Pro B850-S motherboard and am using its included Wi‑Fi antenna. The connection behaves inconsistently: websites and Steam store or payment pages often load very slowly or fail completely. Online payment pages sometimes hang even though the transaction may still go through, which is concerning. However, video streaming works smoothly at the highest quality, online games have low latency, and download speeds are good. The PC is about two walls away from the family router. A laptop previously worked reliably in the same room, and my phone, Xbox, and Chromebook still have no problems there. What could cause this kind of issue, and how can I troubleshoot it?
1 Answer
One possibility is an IP address conflict, where another device on the network has been assigned the same local IP address. On the PC, open Command Prompt and run `ipconfig` to note the IPv4 address, then compare it with the router’s connected-device list. Restarting the router and PC may temporarily clear a duplicate lease; you can also run `ipconfig /release` followed by `ipconfig /renew`. If that does not help, check for updated Wi‑Fi and chipset drivers, confirm the antenna connectors are firmly attached, and try changing the DNS servers. The fact that streaming and gaming work does not completely rule out a network or DNS problem, since different services use different connections and servers.
How can I tell whether another device is using the same IP address?