I have a dial-up connection with a 56kb modem. I recently installed Windows 2000. Here in the last couple of days whenever I accesses the internet the machine just chugs along real slow, graphics sort of ooze across the screen and it sucks. Seems like I had a virus, I got the latest up date from Norton today, nothing found, also Ad-aware says all is clean. Further I haven’t really installed any new stuff since the install a few days ago. So any suggestions on what else I may want to look at. Thanks, Oh the machine is a P2 300mhz 256 megs ram.
One of the biggest causes of slow dialup connections is telephone line noise. Listen for buzzing, humming, crackling, popping or other extraneous noise on your line. If you hear any of this, you’ll want to try to narrow down the cause. Check jacks for loose connections. Check wiring to see that it hasn’t been squashed by staples. Make sure wires don’t pass close to electrically noisy equipment like air conditioners or refrigerators. Inspect wires for fraying or damaged insulation. Plug a phone into the test jack in the network interface box on the outside of the house to check if the noise is coming from inside your house, or is in the telco lines. If the latter, call them and request a repair.
I think cletus is on the right track. Although QED is correct about line noise in general, I think that given the timing the OP described, that’s not the problem in this case.
Inexpensive internal modems (and I think USB external modems) may offload some of their processing tasks to their host computer. These types are often referred to as ‘winmodems’ or ‘softmodems’. They can offer some cast savings because it allows the manufacturer to omit some of the chips that would be necessary for the modem to do all the processing itself.
When winmodems first arrived on the scene, they caused problems for a lot of people. These days new computers are so fast in general that general office and internet use doesn’t tax them very much, leavig plenty of processing power left over modem processing. Even so, there are still people who prefer to avoid winmodems (well, I think most people would prefer to avoide modems in favor of broadband, but you know what I mean).
My hypothesis is that it’s a combination of the new, more demanding operating system and a winmodem that is making the computer so sluggish while online. Windows 2000 is certainly usable on a 300 MHz computer with 256 MB of RAM, but it doesn’t leave a great deal of overhead once you figure in having a browser and modem processing going on as well.
I’m not sure there are many options aside from a new computer, a new modem, or going back to the older OS. You can try to make sure you have the most up to date drivers (and firmware, if applicable) for the modem, and that may help.
There is no line noise that I could detect, but I went and jiggled all the jacks just the same.
** cletus ** wrote…
No, I don’t think so. I was running windows 2k with this setup for months with out any problems, in fact the machine seemed to be much more stable then under win 98. I only re installed because my HD Died the death of a thousand screams. Also, its not a “winmodem” its a us robotics, that came out prior to the popularity of chip less modems (I believe it is a 28.8, but that does not explain why I get connection speeds of 31.2, that’s why I said it was a 56k, fact is I never ran the model number to find out, I inherited it and never asked.) all your points are super valid, only deal is that all was peachy prior to this last install.
After I wrote you all yesterday, I started getting the Dread “SVCHOST.EXE” error. I downloaded the tools from Norton which kill/clean the BLASTER, the SOBIG as well as the WELCH as these have a tenancy to abuse the SVCHOST. I ran them under safe mode, nothing detected. I then ran a deep virus scan nothing again. I then ran Ad-aware (updated) nothing detected. Then
Re installed Zone Alarm (just to make sure) nothing out of the ordinary asked to be logged.
So I’m stumped. What’s is happening is: Lets say I go to retrieve E-mail. The Client contacts the server and then begins the down load, then after 15-20 seconds of communication the download stops (as indicated by the communication lights in the tool bar and by Zone Alarm). Then “blink blink” another 40-50 bytes trickle in and then that’s it for a while. This happens with different e-mail servers located in different cities (nay – Hemispheres) as well as any site with more then the sparsest of graphics. To get an Idea, I got a 280Kb e-mail that would normally come in (31.2kb was my modem speed) in a minute or so, took more then 15 minutes before I killed the download. So any more ideas gang. I really hope I don’t need another nuke and reinstall as I just went through that. Thanks again!