I have recently relocated my desktop PC so it is now very close to the wifi router. Having heard that a direct ethernet cable is faster than wifi I have made the connection with a cable. Is it now necessary to somehow disable the wifi on the PC? If so, how do I do it. Or does Windows automatically select the most efficient link to the router?
Windows 7 Pro.
Is the wireless device for your desktop PC an internal PCI-E card or an external USB adapter?
If it is an internal PCI-E card, you can remove it or disable it in the Device Manager.
If it is an external USB adapter, you can unplug it or disable it in the Device Manager.
Until you decide for sure whether you want to use ethernet or wireless, disable the wireless device in the Device Manager and keep its driver installed.
It is an internal card so I can disable it. Thank you very much for the info.
You are welcome.
If you decide to go back to wireless, all you need to do is re-enable the internal PCI-E card and unplug the ethernet cable.
If you plug an Ethernet cable into the network connector it should (Windows) chose the Ethernet over the WiFi. In the networking world this is called a metric. Metrics are defined in a tiered hierarchy. That's why you can't have WiFi and Ethernet at the same time. For someone wanting to accomplish that you need load balancing. Though, that has other names as well...
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