How can I diagnose my slow internet problems?

Zascar

I reinstalled XP Home the other day, and my internet has been pretty slow ever since. I'm on NTL 2mb and when I do a speed test with irishisptest.com the results are much the same:

Download Speed 1932 kbps (236 KB/s)
Upload Speed 200 kbps (25 KB/s)
Qos 93 %
RTT 53 ms
Maxpause 138 ms

But pages when surfing can take a long time to load, and sometimes using download programs the files just won't start or die half way.

Can anyone please suggest how I can diagnose and fix this problem?
Thanks

Freddie59

Zascar wrote:

I reinstalled XP Home the other day, and my internet has been pretty slow ever since. I'm on NTL 2mb and when I do a speed test with irishisptest.com the results are much the same:

Download Speed 1932 kbps (236 KB/s)
Upload Speed 200 kbps (25 KB/s)
Qos 93 %
RTT 53 ms
Maxpause 138 ms

But pages when surfing can take a long time to load, and sometimes using download programs the files just won't start or die half way.

Can anyone please suggest how I can diagnose and fix this problem?
Thanks

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/aolacsd.exe.html

See if this is running in the background. I've seen it on a friend's machine and it slowed it to a crawl. Disable it - and hey presto; you're back to normal. AFAIK (and the speedtest proves it) it's the sysytem resources that are the problem - not the speed. Hope that helps.:)

JonathanAnon

If you've just reinstalled the PC, then it's likely that it's taking down Windows updates. Turn off Windows updates temporarily and then see how fast it runs.

Zascar

Thanks. I've already done all the windows updates etc, and also cleaned out any non esential programs in the startup. Still no joy.

New problem started today - I open firefox, click on a bookmark, and the page just goes white with "Untitled" on the tab. If I click refresh several times it will eventally load the page but sometime I might click it 10 times or more, if it works at all. Sounds very strange to me, what would this be?

Also now my Ares is stuck at "Connecting"..

bungholio

click start run type in
cmd
type in the black dos window
ping 159.134.237.6 -t

let it run for about 20 seconds
press ctrl+c

take a screen shot and post it here

old boy

i had to get rid of firefox lately, that could be your problem, a posting in 1 of the tech sites claimed it can be full of malware.

spurious

old boy wrote:

i had to get rid of firefox lately, that could be your problem, a posting in 1 of the tech sites claimed it can be full of malware.

Amazed to hear that - do you have a link?

Zascar

Ok ping results here: www.zascar.com/files/ping.jpg
Looks normal to me, am I right?
Would this then means it's my computer that is making things slow?
What else can I do?

thebman

How does Internet Explorer work or have you tried another web browser such as Opera.

It could just be a firefox thing. Is your Pc slow doing anything else?

Zascar

Internet Explorer seems to be the same. E.G. if I click on boards.ie - the page will take ages and eventually load without using CSS - so all the fonts are Times New Roman and huge...

spurious

Does your firewall indicate anything unexpected accessing the net?

chopperbyrne

Open a command prompt and run netstat -a

It will show all TCP and UDP connections from your PC.

If you shut down all web browsers and Instant Messenger services, you should only have one or two things in here at most.

old boy

it was on tech republic about 2 weeks ago, sorry i cannot give you a link