Hello again Lover,
Thank you for all your useful suggestions.
It turns out that it was an issue with the internal wifi adapter. I'm using the HD version of AChat and the laptop specifications are sort of borderline for this edition of AChat so I think it was overheating too fast and the first thing that was sacrificed was the internal wifi adapter which automatically switched off.
I have now attached an external USB wifi adapter, leaving the internal one disabled, and it looks like the wifi connection when I use AChat is working comfortably. It is not an ideal solution but a decent workaround nonetheless
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Fingers crossed I don't have any further wifi issues but if something goes wrong again I'll switch to the defaut AChat version and uninstall the HD version as you suggested as well.
If you any other comments or suggestions about this issue please let me know as well
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Many thanks once again