Once again I’m seeking advice on a problem with my computer. As always, bear in mind my ignorance on this subject is vast and deep.
I’ve recently begun having a problem with downloading. At least I assume this is the problem. When I’m surfing about, I have no noticable delays in pages loading. But whenever I try to save a page, image, text, etc I experience a prolonged delay (sometimes up to five minutes) before my computer saves the file. This had just been happening in the last two or three weeks. I’ve haven’t done anything unusual in that period that I recall.
Any ideas on things I should check or things I might try to resolve this problem?
If you’re on a dial up connection you won’t have the same bandwidth as you do when you save a file from an app running on your computer. Your modem would be a bottleneck.
At what point during the saving process does the delay happen? Is it the save as box that takes forever to come up or is it when you actually hit the save button to write the file to the disk? How big are the files?
It’s the ‘save as’ box that appears to be the bottle neck. If I open this box and then hit cancel and don’t save anything, I still have the delay.
The files are various sizes; from extremely large (80 megs) to fairly small (5 k). The delay hits all of them the same.
I have a dial-up. I have no idea whether I have a router or a hub becuase I don’t know what these are. There’s no network involved. I don’t think I have a firewall. I certainly haven’t put in a firewall in the last few weeks since this problem started.
Hmm, that is interesting. Does this only happen when downloading or do you have the delay if you create a new file and try to save it? Are you saving the file to your hard drive or writing it to a floppy or cd or a different partition?
Have you ran scandisk and disk defrag recently(#1)? How much free disk space do you have?(#2) What browser are you using?
Slee
#1. To run scan disk click start ->programs ->accessories ->system tools ->scan disk. When it comes up check the box to do a thorough scan and hit start. This will take a long time so start it before you go to bed or something. Also, check the box to automatically fix errors. After running scan disk run disk defragmenter from start ->programs ->accessories ->system tools. Make sure to turn off all programs before running both scan disk and defrag.
#2. To check free drive space double click on the My Computer icon. When that opens highlight your c drive, right click on it and choose properties. That will tell you how much free space your drive has.
No delay when saving files I create. It’s strictly an internet problem. I always save onto my hard drive.
I haven’t run scandisk or defrag lately. I’ll give it a try. But I have checked my hard drive and I still have a lot of free space. I have a 20g hard drive with about 8g free.
I use Netscape 7.0 with a local ISP run by my phone company.
Keep in mind that the problem could be external. It could be the telephone line that you are connected to. Maybe a change was recently made at the phone company. And, “Upstream,” and, “Downstream,” data rates vary widely from place to place.
But, I would try the tried and true Defrag. I would also run Disk Cleanup. I would wipe out your cookies and delete any offline files. These might be gumming up the works.
Do one thing, if possible with Netscape - hover your mouse over the connection to see what the connection speed is at. You said that there is no problem with viewing websites, but those might be stored in your cache. It would be new material that would need to be downloaded by your computer. It’s important to see the actual speed that you are connected at.
I have seen this problem before. In my case is was caused by an invalid drive in windows explorer; such as a empty floppy drive when it tried to access a floppy disk. The simplest way to check that is to right click “my computer” and select “explore”. If you see a delay between the time windows explorer opens and the drive objects appear in the left pane then the pc thinks that there should be a CD or a floppy disk in one of the drives and until it times out it keeps trying to access it. This was the cause of the delay in my case. You can also check this by opening your word processor and start a new doc and then select “save as” from the file menu and try to select a location other then the default in the “save in” drop down selection. You should see the same delay as when you try to save from the internet.
If this is your problem, it can be fixed it by editing the registry. There is a “recent files” value in there that had a error. If you do not know what you are doing, you should never try to directly edit the registry, you could completly ruin your machine. Another way is to open your word processor and open and close a dozen files on your hard drive, not a cd or floppy, and that will rewrite the entry in the registry as well. After you have done that reboot, (it is windoze after all, not unix), and the problem should be gone.
I did a scandisk (no problems noted). I started a defrag and left it running overnight. Unfortunately, my computer at soem point noticed the lack of activity and shut itself down. I’ll start another defrag when I’ll be around to keep it going. I’ll also do the Disk Cleanup (I assume that’s another system tool).
I’ve considered the possibility that its an ISP problem. Obviously not a lot I can do about that. I will check on it when I travel this week and have an opportunity to use a different ISP. If the problem disappears I’ll know what’s to blame (and start looking for a new ISP).
I also considered the possibility I picked up some kind of virus but if so it’s a strange acting one. I plan on running a virus check through the system to see if I flush anything out.
I’ll also try norinew’s suggestion although we’re approaching the edge of my computer abilities. I’ll print out the post and take it a step at a time.
Stop what you’re doing right this second, and go install one!
They are truly valuable, especially if you’re still learning and wouldn’t feel confifent say, manually cleaning a Trojan’s tracks from the system files and registry by yourself.
Okay, I’ll add clearing the cache to my “to do” list.
I’ll also work on a firewall. The rest of that post went for beyond my comprehension. And while I’d like to think I’m still learning, I’ve been working with computers since 1979, so I’ve probably reached a plateau in my potential knowlege of this subject.
Try downloading Netscape 7.1. If you don’t have a bunch of personalized settings or emails saved, it might be better to uninstall 7.0 before installing 7.1.
