Slow internet on one computer in the house

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Nathan47

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#157394 29-Nov-2014 21:40

Hi all,

I've been noticing the internet on my computer slowing down considerably of recent times, and it has got progressively worse over a couple of weeks and now it is unbearable. The worst site appears to be facebook where half the images do not load anymore.

I've checked with other computers in the house and the internet works fine on them. I'm running wireless, however I tried hardwiring to the router and got the same result. I've tried resetting the router to no effect. I checked my wireless driver which is the most up to date for my machine. My thought is that is must be a virus, however I'm running AVG free, and I recently downloaded Malwarebytes and have run a few scans with each which don't appear to have any effect.

Can anyone provide any help or advice?

Cheers

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#1185591 29-Nov-2014 22:04

Can you tell us more, and be a bit more precise? What's going slow? If you download a large file is that slow or is it just web browsing? Try something on download.com to test that. Go to www.speedtest.net and run a speed test, and do the same from another computer also on wireless. What type of computer is it, and what OS? How old is the computer? Has any new software been installed recently?

Brumfondl

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#1185627 29-Nov-2014 23:16

My first thought is always to flush the DNS cache.
Open command prompt and type: ipconfig /flushdns
and see if that helps at all.

Brumfondl

freitasm

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#1185628 29-Nov-2014 23:19

What ISP? What kind of connection?

Is there anything uploading on this PC while using it?

ckc

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#1185641 30-Nov-2014 01:22

Software rot, progressive, uninstall/reinstall NIC drivers.

freitasm

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#1185709 30-Nov-2014 09:58

Perhaps check that there are drivers updates and install those. Uninstall/Install NIC drivers is extreme and you have to be sure you have Internet access to download the drivers or have the drivers handy on your system.

gzt

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#1185714 30-Nov-2014 10:25

Nathan47: I've been noticing the internet on my computer slowing down considerably of recent times, and it has got progressively worse over a couple of weeks and now it is unbearable. The worst site appears to be facebook where half the images do not load anymore.

These images are often cached on separate services. Brumfondl suggested a dns caching problem above so try that, and there can be browser crap that causes similar issues. If you are using internet explorer you can start it with all extensions and plugins disabled and see if there is any difference.

Nathan47

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#1185766 30-Nov-2014 14:01

Thanks all for your replys.

Timmay:
I don't tend to download files much so I haven't noticed. I tried your link, but couldn't find many big files, however a 25MB took about 5sec. Also did the speedtest download speed was a little bit slower than expect 25MB compared to 30MB (see here https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3947978008). Computer is an EMachine E640G laptop, about 3-4 years old, everything else runs fine. No new software of recent. OS is Windows 7. On my other computer the speed test came out as expected with approx 30MB (see here https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3947922798)

Brumfondl:
Tried the DNS flush but made no difference. I have also run CCleaner previously which had no effect either.

Freitasm:
ISP is Snap, connection is ultrafast broadband, quoted speeds being 30MB up and 10MB down. Nothing is uploading that I am aware of.

CKC/Freitasm:
Not sure what the NIC drivers are, but will maybe hold off uninstalling for the time being since Freitasm is saying that is extreme. I checked for windows updates and found 3 optional, that didn't appear to be related, installed them anyway but to know effect.

gzt:
I am running chrome, but i tried IE and had the same issues.

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#1185769 30-Nov-2014 14:21

CKC/Freitasm:
Not sure what the NIC drivers are, but will maybe hold off uninstalling for the time being since Freitasm is saying that is extreme. I checked for windows updates and found 3 optional, that didn't appear to be related, installed them anyway but to know effect.

As a compromise, you could try disabling checksum offloading (there are multiple settings for this in the adapter properties). I've had corruption issues which were resolved by disabling these.

Twice I've had faulty switches be responsible for poor network performance, and these issues can be incredibly hard to diagnose. The last time this occurred a passively cooled switch caused cyclic Internet speed drops during the day. Took many days of monitoring and swapping things in and out to find where the issue was. Don't rule out cooling issue or hardware faults.

gzt

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#1185785 30-Nov-2014 15:30

SirHumphreyAppleby you are reminding me of a situation where the MTU gets screwed up on Windows and set to a silly value for ethernet. maybe just a simple p&p of the network card driver would fix that.

timmmay

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#1185794 30-Nov-2014 15:48

It seems both computers have a good connection, the speed tests are very very similar. I suggest you try a different web browser and report if that makes any difference. If you have any cordless phones make sure they're unplugged, then plug back in and see if it's worse.

ckc

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#1185865 30-Nov-2014 18:19

Nathan47:

CKC/Freitasm:
Not sure what the NIC drivers are, but will maybe hold off uninstalling for the time being since Freitasm is saying that is extreme. I checked for windows updates and found 3 optional, that didn't appear to be related, installed them anyway but to know effect.

Not sure I agree that it's extreme. :P

Network drivers. For your LAN/wireless card.

As long as you read and fully understand the instructions before you do it, it's relatively easy to reinstall the drivers. If you Google for "reinstall NIC drivers" or "reinstall LAN drivers" or "reinstall wireless drivers" you'll be okay.

Nathan47

12 posts

Geek

#1186655 1-Dec-2014 21:47

Thanks again for your replies.

SirHumphreyAppleby:
I tried disabling checksum offloading via regedit, however it had no effect. When you say hardware faults are you talking about checking the fans etc in the laptop?

gzt:
not sure what you mean by a p&p of the network card driver, can you elaborate?

timmay:
I tried IE and it had the same results, we don't have any cordless phones, however I've tried switching network channels multiple times and routers tells me the channel we're on has very little interference.

ckc:
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the NICs, no success, I notice you can also delete the software drivers, were you suggesting doing this also?

Just some more information, we can quite happily stream youtube and netflix, however loading the actual page itself can take quite a while and require multiple tries.. also interesting is that geekzone has suddenly become the hardest page for me to load...

gzt

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#1186666 1-Dec-2014 22:40

Nathan47: gzt:
not sure what you mean by a p&p of the network card driver, can you elaborate?

Delete the network card driver from device manager and restart the computer. The driver will be automatically detected and reinstalled. (you did something similar reinstalling the drivers so not really needed anymore and unlikley to make a difference but you could try anyway harmless)

Edit: Actually do this for the ethernet network card, though you are not using it, the process of doing so can actually make a difference in some circumstances so try it.

shk292

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#1186746 2-Dec-2014 08:35

Slightly random, but I'd try changing the DNS servers for that machine - to OpenDNS or Google for example. The fact that large downloads and speedtest are both fast indicates to me that there is nothing wrong with the speed of the LAN conection, whereas the inability to load items on a page may point to the inability to resolve the server name for those items.

ckc

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#1186894 2-Dec-2014 11:06

Could you open task manager and post a list of your currently running processes? Go Start > Run > type "cmd" (no quotes) > then at the command prompt type "tasklist | clip" (again, no quotes) and then paste the result.

Also, at this point it'd be good to know what machine you've got. Brand, model, specs.

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