Help: Very slow internet problem

frontfoot

frontfoot

frontfoot

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Joined
31 Jul 2012
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62
Hi,

I've been trying to figure out why my internet connection on one of my pcs has suddenly dropped and can't fathom it out so I thought I'd post here and ask for help.

I am on virgin 50mb connection, but my main pc the connection is dire, when using speedtest (on the times it actually gets past the 100% screen or configuration load error) I get speeds of around 0.3 Mb/s, on other machines in my network I get a nice 50 Mb/s, so leads me to believe this is a machine specific thing.

I have had intermittent latency before (lag spikes but speed test would usually get between 5mb and 30mb then - I think started around the time I bought a new graphics card of all things) but noway near as bad as it is now. I think the big problems started at the time the firmware upgrade was pushed to my router (could be coincidence).

I had tried and tested lots of things including:
- Rebooting and Power cycling the router and PC
- Turning off Avast shields and Windows Firewall
- Stopping just about every windows service I can and using msconfig to not load anything at startup and to only start microsfot services
- Run in safe mode (same problem)
- Used onboard NIC and also tried 2 other NICs (one realteak and one intel)
- Network speed between pc's is fine - copying files at 80-90mb/s
- Ran MBAM (came up clean) and Avast scan (fast scan found nothing but full scan found a virus in one file - this is a file that's sitting on my old hard drive which I haven't accessed since re-installing windows 7 on a new hard drive so don't think thats the issue).
- Swapped cat 5 cables between 2 pcs, one pc works fine with either cable, main pc has problems with both cables.

Has anyone got any more suggestions, I am at a loss here :(
 
Bit of a blind stab here but you could install Win8/Linux to see if it's a software issue. You could create a hard drive partion and install it there just to see if it's software and not some strange hardware fault.

It would be easy enough to remove the OS and partion too.
 
Smoogels said:
Bit of a blind stab here but you could install Win8/Linux to see if it's a software issue. You could create a hard drive partion and install it there just to see if it's software and not some strange hardware fault.

It would be easy enough to remove the OS and partion too.
Click to expand...

Bit of a long winded way around it surely?

OP, you mention one of your PCs, do you have others on your home LAN that work fine, inclusing phones/tablets?
 
Looks like you tried pretty much everything i can think of. So this would lead to, as already mentioned, a software problem.

You do mention the router update, so i'm guessing that but i don't get why just one machine would have this problem.
 
Smoogels said:
Bit of a blind stab here but you could install Win8/Linux to see if it's a software issue. You could create a hard drive partion and install it there just to see if it's software and not some strange hardware fault.

It would be easy enough to remove the OS and partion too.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your reply, I have my old win xp cd around, i can dig out an old hard drive and install it onto that as a test. Not sure why I didn't think of that before, thanks for the reply - one I can try later (can do that one tonight as will take a bit longer) :)
 
MilanoChris said:
Bit of a long winded way around it surely?

OP, you mention one of your PCs, do you have others on your home LAN that work fine, inclusing phones/tablets?
Click to expand...

I don't have a tablet - not tried phone (yet), tried laptop and 3 other pcs, all are fine. The 4 PC's are connected via ethernet and the laptop via wireless.
 
InertProtocol said:
Looks like you tried pretty much everything i can think of. So this would lead to, as already mentioned, a software problem.

You do mention the router update, so i'm guessing that but i don't get why just one machine would have this problem.
Click to expand...

Me too, but I kinda hoped that running in safe mode would stop most software from running, but problem occurred there too. Guess safe mode is still running *something* that is messing up the internet. I've not (knowingly) installed anything new over the last few days when this problem suddenly happened (think it started Friday 27th July or Saturday but not sure)
 
What are your IP settings on the machine you've got an issue with, including DNS settings? Also what is your routers IP? Anything in the hosts file? What network location is Windows set to?
 
MilanoChris said:
What are your IP settings on the machine you've got an issue with, including DNS settings? Also what is your routers IP? Anything in the hosts file? What network location is Windows set to?
Click to expand...

DNS is set to automatic but I've tried using google's one's too (8.8.8.8 and another one). Don't think its DNS related as the web page themselves seem to resolve quick - it's more bandwidth related i think as the images on pages etc take a while to download as well as actual downloads.

I am using DHCP and being assigned an IP address from my router - getting an IP in the 192.168.0.x range with my router being the gateway at 192.168.0.1.

I've also tried disabled IPv6 and some tunneling software I have run before to connect to work (don't think its tunneling software issue though as I have used it before with no problems and same software works on other machines on my LAN).

I'd forgotten about the hosts file before so not checked that before. The file however only contains comments:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

EDIT: Missed the last question, I am set to "Home Network" if thats the question you were asking?
 
What motherboard do you have and do you have the latest chipset/NIC drivers installed? Have you dried setting the NIC to 1000Mbits/full duplex instead of auto if it is set or auto? Or try dropping it to 100/full and see if it changes things?
 
MTU setting IMO. I also have this problem when my MTU on my network adapter is set to anything below 7500. I have no idea why :(
 
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MilanoChris said:
What motherboard do you have and do you have the latest chipset/NIC drivers installed? Have you dried setting the NIC to 1000Mbits/full duplex instead of auto if it is set or auto? Or try dropping it to 100/full and see if it changes things?
Click to expand...

Motherboard is a gigabyte FA-X58A-UD3R - chipset drivers might not be up to date but I did update the on-board LAN drivers (seperate download from the chipset itself). The machine has been running ok for months so unsure if it would be a chipset issue (had some intermittent latency spikes but not had them in a while and this problem is much more dramatic). I have set the NICs (tried 2 + the onboard one) to 1000 and 100 but no changes, it was set to auto initially and I put it back to auto after testing various different speeds. The NIC seems to be driving ethernet activity fine - file copies between machines are fast.
 
cp88 said:
MTU setting IMO. I also have this problem when my MTU on my network adapter is set to anything below 7500. I have no idea why :(
Click to expand...

Do you mean the MTU on the router (virgin media super hub)? I have not seen an MTU on the NIC itself or am I missing it and need to hunt for it ?

Thanks for all your replies so far guys, I appreciate it :)

EDIT: Tried changing the MTU on the router from 1500 to 7500 but it won't let me:

"Invalid entry, MTU size must be 0 or between 256 and 1500."
 
frontfoot said:
Motherboard is a gigabyte FA-X58A-UD3R - chipset drivers might not be up to date but I did update the on-board LAN drivers (seperate download from the chipset itself). The machine has been running ok for months so unsure if it would be a chipset issue (had some intermittent latency spikes but not had them in a while and this problem is much more dramatic). I have set the NICs (tried 2 + the onboard one) to 1000 and 100 but no changes, it was set to auto initially and I put it back to auto after testing various different speeds. The NIC seems to be driving ethernet activity fine - file copies between machines are fast.
Click to expand...

So let me get this right, file transfers between machines on your LAN are fine, but as soon as you go off your network, ie the internet on this one machine, it's no longer fine?

What sort of MB/s transfer rates are you getting accross your LAN?

When did the fault happen? Anything in particular happen at home, new router, power cut etc etc?

Can you put your router into modem only mode and connect the PC directly to the LAN port closest to the WAN port on the superhub and see if it changes things?
 
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MilanoChris said:
So let me get this right, file transfers between machines on your LAN are fine, but as soon as you go off your network, ie the internet on this one machine, it's no longer fine?

What sort of MB/s transfer rates are you getting accross your LAN?

When did the fault happen? Anything in particular happen at home, new router, power cut etc etc?

Can you put your router into modem only mode and connect the PC directly to the LAN port closest to the WAN port on the superhub and see if it changes things?
Click to expand...

LAN speeds are fine yes, and only one PC has slow internet access yes. Speed tests has this machine around 0.1mb/s and other machines hit the 50mb/sec mark.

Just did a file copy, taking about 10 seconds to copy a 500Mb file over the LAN (from my server box to my main pc box).

I noticed a problem a couple of days ago with latency (no way near as bad as it is now) but thought it went away when I followed the advice here http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043281 which suggested this:

Open regedit
* Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
* There will be an entry for network performance throttling, default value is 10; set it to FFFFFFFF hex (willl look like 0xFFFFFFFF to the right of the entry)
* Reboot

Things seemed ok for a day or so after that, then I noticed the problems got much worse - I rebooted the router and noticed I had a new firmware version (the UI looked very different so knew it had just been pushed there very recently). This is the only change I am aware of but can't see how it would only effect one machine on my LAN.

I have not (knowingly) installed anything else and have not had any hardware changes since buying a new SSD and re-installing windows a few months back. I am not aware of having any power cuts and am was playing "The Secret World when my latency shot up to 5,000 (it seems to cap at 5,000) for 10-30 seconds at a time with a few seconds inbetween of actually being able to play. This is when I started to investigate the problem in more detail.

I have not used the superhub in modem only mode and plugged pc directly into it yet - I can have a crack at this later though, bit of a logistic challenge to move gear around the house so will leave this until a bit later as I am trying to also do some work on this pc at the same time as fix my network issue (trying being the operative word here as I keep getting distracted trying to fix this network issue - remote desktopping to another machine to surf from as surfing is too slow on main machine).
 
cp88 said:
On the NIC itself, hmm it might be listed as Max Frame Size.

edit: oh damn, mine allows upto 10240.

Is there a jumbo frames option? try disabling/enabling it.

You could also try running TCP optimizer, http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php/
Click to expand...

Thanks - I have played with jumbo frames a while ago but not recently, will give it another try and I've not tried TCP Optimizer, seen it mentioned elsewhere but not yet tried it, will do now...
 
Playing with Jumbo Frames didn't make much difference, I can set it to 2k,3k,4k,5k,6k,7k and disabled. It was set to disabled before (I think I had set it that way a while ago when I had some (much smaller) latency issues. Tried 2k, 7k and disabled just now.

Ran TCPOptimizer, is there a way to save current settings and revert back to them? Can see a radio button for switching to optimal and wanna try that but want to ensure I can get back to where I am before I do that.

EDIT: NVM Found the option to save settings :)
 
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MilanoChris said:
Can you put your router into modem only mode and connect the PC directly to the LAN port closest to the WAN port on the superhub and see if it changes things?
Click to expand...

Didn't have to move my pc after - while digging through my drawer of cat 5 cables I noticed I had a very long one (and a long cat 5....erm nvm).

It worked though, using the super hub in modem mode has got me back to 50mb/s. Greats news for me, can confirm the problem is with the router. Thanks for the suggestion, although I had considered it before I was putting off doing it as I thought I'd have to move my pc :)

Not so good for my g/f though as her pc is no longer plugged into a router and she has no internet access now ;-)
 
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