Weak Wireless with Acer Aspire 5745G?

Hi,

I recently bought an Acer Aspire 5745G notebook, and i have been unable to get 5 bars as i have previously been able to through my wifi network at home.

The position of my router has not changed at all and on my older laptop
(Asus) there was never any drama with this.

The acer sits no more then 8 ft away from the router but i have only 1-2 (3 if im lucky) bars when i am on. As well as drop outs constantly if someone uses their Iphone on the network..
its pretty bad and i dont know what the issue is. I have plugged the ethernet cable in and i have only 4 / 5 bars .

The Wireless card is an Atheros AR5B03 Wireless Network Adaptor
with an Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

Using a Billion Wireless- G Router.

Of course i am leaning towards the laptop being the issue..but how to fix.. im lost.
I have gone to Atheros to check on updates and any other websites that may have something more up to date without luck..
IS there anything behind the scenes i can do to boost it.. Apart from wrapping foil around my router (YouTube...)

Cheers Guys.

 

New Atheros Wi-Fi driver v 9.2.0.316

Make sure that power management in Windows is set to no power-saving for Wi-Fi. If neither the driver nor power-saving do the job you should open the service hatch and verify that both antennas are actually connected.

 

Try changing the wireless channel of the router to eliminate potential clashes with other nearby wireless equipment.