Built new uber PC! But now 'net connection is slow...

SeriousStu

SeriousStu

SeriousStu

Associate
Joined
26 Jul 2006
Posts
59
Just finished building my new rig but now for some reason the 'net connection is slowed to a crawl. I'm lucky if I get 50kb/s right now, but with my old rig (and with this PC before I reinstalled WinXP with SP2) I could get speeds of up to 600kb/s.

I haven't been through Windows update yet, but that will be a long task with my connection being like this at the moment. I'm on a wireless connection, but the router signal is currently "Very Good" (always has been, has never dipped below that).

Just wondering... since this is a brand new install of WinXP, is there some random option that might be floating around that's holding back the connection? I'm with Virgin Broadband (Plan 1, up to 8mb) and I suppose there's a chance that the service is having a bit of a hiccup at the moment, but that seems unlikely.

Any thoughts? Would really like my 600+ kb/s back :)
 
Thanks for the link, shine. Unfortunately, my IP isn't pingable??

"sorry, 82.3.235.93 is not pingable from www.dslreports.com, Please disable firewall ping protection. See this FAQ section for more information."

The FAQ shows me how to make myself pingable with out Linksys router but unfortunately I don't have access to the settings of it. Hopefully I will soon but my housemate tends to forget things (such as the freakin' password to the router! Should be saved in his forms in Firefox though, hopefully!). Must remind him!

I took the time to do a speed test though (this one) and I get 400+ kb/s.... what's that about??
 
Speedtesters aren't really a good way to test your real download speed. I'm on a 22MB connection and the speed tester you pointed to reckons I'm getting 200K. I'm not its just that the I can download the file too quickly.

A better test is to use a downloadmanager and saturate your connection by downloading a big file from a fast site try:

http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/

What speed do you get?
 
Cheers shine - nice link!

Downloading "100MB_nonzero.bin" I get averaged at about 70kb/s... not quite 600kb/s, but at least it's better than a 512K connection!
 
I've just been rereading your original post. Is it possible for you to connect via ethernet to the router just to make sure you're not seeing any wireless issues? Also, are you on XP SP2? SP2 handles wireless connections far better.
 
Unfortunately I don't have an ethernet cable long enough to reach the router. I now have access to the router settings, so if there's anything in there you want me to check up on I can now!

Yes, I'm on SP2. When I installed without SP2 (from a different disk on a rocky hdd) the connection was fine. Bit strange... dunno what's going on :(
 
Try the packet loss tool at dsl reports and see what that says. The WAG354G is probably the only linksys router that I've never laid my hands on so I'm familiar with the GUI. But somewhere in there will be your line stats. It should report something like:

Upstream 828638
Downstream 21963740
Line Attenuation 12.5 db 21 db
Noise Margin 17 db 6 db

It might not be exactly like that but something similar.
 
Last edited:
Managed to toggle the option so I could do the Packet Loss test at dslreports.com. See them here.

It looks pretty bad... I'm updating something in Steam at the moment (speed is a bit random, from 100kb/s to as low as 10kb/s). Should I have stopped this before the test? :)

I'll look further into the router for the line stats - I don't really know my way around this thing!
 
Are these the line stats you were talking about?

DSL Status: Up
DSL Modulation Mode: GDMT
DSL Path Mode: FAST
Downstream Rate: 8128 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 448 Kbps
Downstream Margin: 13 db
Upstream Margin: 26 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 19
Upstream Line Attenuation: 9
Downstream Transmit Power: 0
Upstream Transmit Power: 0
 
SeriousStu said:
Managed to toggle the option so I could do the Packet Loss test at dslreports.com. See them here.

It looks pretty bad... I'm updating something in Steam at the moment (speed is a bit random, from 100kb/s to as low as 10kb/s). Should I have stopped this before the test? :)

I'll look further into the router for the line stats - I don't really know my way around this thing!
Click to expand...

You want to make sure that no one using the internet connection when you're doing these tests otherwise your results will not be accurate. Was anyone else using the net connection at the same time?
 
You might want to post up a list of your processes in Task Manager. If you've just built the machine it's possible a virus/trojan snuck on when you connected to the internet before you got an update from Microsoft. I've seen it happen before.

Post your list here and we can check it.

J.
 
jamiemoles said:
You might want to post up a list of your processes in Task Manager. If you've just built the machine it's possible a virus/trojan snuck on when you connected to the internet before you got an update from Microsoft. I've seen it happen before.

Post your list here and we can check it.

J.
Click to expand...

That is exactly whats happend to me. I went to download msn before i updated windows and i got some bad things. My internet went even slower than his.

If you can't fix it, id format then updated windows FULLY before you even think about going on any other sites.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom