Can't hold steady connection after reformat...

This is an issue I've had anytime I have reformatted my laptop, the last time was a year ago and for the life of me I can't recall how I fixed it.

Reformatted last week to do a fresh install of Win 10, everything went fine, but I have had nonstop connection issues since that time. I changed the channels on the new gateway/router from comcast as I "thought" that's what fixed the issue last time, but that hasn't been the case. Here's what happens....

Webpages bog down or time out randomly, and the only way to get them to load is to click the "internet settings" tab on the taskbar. After I pull up the available networks, it will let me through otherwise it just grinds to a halt.

I'm never shown as being disconnected from my network at anytime when I go to the connection tab, but for whatever reason I have to click on it and open it to actually get my connection back.

Laptop is an Acer Aspire M, running Windows 10 but it's done regardless of the OS anytime I have reformatted. I did recently upgrade the modem as well (comcast gateway/router) but again, it was having the issue before that as I reformatted a week before the new modem came.