So, my mum has been riding my case with her internet being slow and laggy for the last two or three days, so today I came over with my netbook to diagnose the problem.
It’s weird. I’m getting my full 6 megabits per second on the netbook. Everything loads ok. When I go on her desktop (windows XP, better specs than my netbook in pretty much every category), pages weren’t loading quickly (or at all in some cases), and everything was crawling. I thought this might be issues with the processor, the RAM.
But as a stopgap measure I said, “Hey, why don’t I try using google chrome? In my experience, this eats up a lot less system resources than internet explorer!” Well, to download the 500 something kilobyte installer, I was waiting more than 10 minutes. The download rate seemed to peak somewhere around 1.1 Kbs per second. So I switched it off.
Both of these computers are running off the same router. What could possibly account for the difference in internet speed between the two? Adware? Virus scanners? Faulty wire? I’m willing to try anything to get her to stop whin-- er, to fix her internet connection!
You can start by making sure you are really looking at a network issue. Open a Command Prompt and ping a known target such as yahoo.com or some well-known host in your country.
Pinging yahoo.com [98.137.149.56] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 98.137.149.56: bytes=32 time=148ms TTL=58
Reply from 98.137.149.56: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=58
Reply from 98.137.149.56: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=58
Reply from 98.137.149.56: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=58
Ping statistics for 98.137.149.56:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 61ms, Maximum = 148ms, Average = 83ms
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Perform the same ping from both computers. If the numbers are identical (or nearly so), then it is probably not the network, and you should look at some of the other things you mentioned.
I have never used Malwarebytes, but I know many people who swear it is fantastic at discovering malware.
Might suggest looking at the running processes (in task manager) and Googling the ones you don’t understand). Check what’s running on her computer and whether it’s really needed. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised. Word of warning, make sure you’ve correctly identified the process and researched it’s purpose before deciding to remove it.
Yes, your ping test revealed pretty much the precise same numbers. An internet speed test, how ever, had my download speed at 6.2 Megabits, versus her 45 kilobytes per second.
The desktop already has Norton 360, but I will install malwarebytes, see if it can find anything…thanks!
Your mom’s computer…
Immediately I think of spyware, malware, comet cursor, screensaver plugins, etc.
There’s probably some trojan/virus/spyware that is eating up the resources.
You can try having her computer open in safe mode with networking.
Good idea. Yeah, don’t get me started on that computer. At one point, she had Norton and TWO other adware scanners running. And she would come and complain to me that her computer was slow…:rolleyes:. There’s soooo many things I could do to make it run smoothly, but she won’t yield her irrational fear of viruses.
Sometomes an “internet Firewall” application can slow download speeds substantially while they block and scan every last byte coming through. I don’t know of recent ones, however, that would put that much of a load on the computer.
Check the driver settings sometimes you can set it to Auto, sometimes Auto makes it go slower then if you actually put in 54gbs. Also if the router is set to be B & G signals, sometimes a B device can slow down all other traffic, I would set it to G only unless you need B.
Also flash it with DD-WRT if it is compatible, with that you can set QoS (Quality of Service) which can make a certain computer always get more bandwidth than the others, or even a particular service such as a P2P program or a game. Check the logs for packet collisons, the router may not even be set up properly. DD-WRT also lets you change the frame burst interval as well as signal strength.
And of course check out all apps running on both machines
Malware Adbytes worked great. Found 68 messed up registry files. She was flabbergasted as to how Norton missed that. I may just get her to uninstall it yet!
I’d check the “Link Speed & Duplex” setting on her Ethernet Card (right-click via Device Manager, Advanced tab). Our IT support desk finds users all the time who have somehow changed it from the preferred “Auto Detect” to a slower speed.
Go under the network properties in control panel and check the link speed and duplex. If it is set to auto-negotiate you may want to try just hard coding it to 100 full duplex.
