Delay in accessing the Internet

[Theodoric]

Until fairly recently I found that as soon as the last icon had loaded onto my SysTray that I could connect to the Internet via IE. However, it now takes about 5 minutes before I can get a connection. A check with Windows Task Manager found nothing hogging the CPU usage. A check with Sygate showed addresses in the range 169.254.x.x appearing, but a bit of googling suggested that these were harmless. The Sygate traffic history graphs would show nothing happening then, as I said, things would burst into life about 5 minutes later than was usual a week or so ago. I've got a Norton AV, Sygate firewall and check with AdAware and Spybot once a week and nothing particularly suspicious has appeared. Any ideas, anyone?

[TheBlueRaja]

5 minutes seems a bit long - but what is your IP address as soon as you startup - it could be a DHCP server taking a while to assign you an address - but 5 mins seems way to long even for that.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

5 minutes seems a bit long - but what is your IP address as soon as you startup - it could be a DHCP server taking a while to assign you an address - but 5 mins seems way to long even for that.

Thanks. A couple of questions, if I may.

1) How do I find my IP address as soon as I start up, and what should I be looking for when I find it?

2) Re the 5 minutes. I may have been suffering from the "watched kettle" effect here, that is the objective time being shorter than the subjective time. However, I'd swear by at least a 3 minute delay and it is definitely longer than it was a week or so ago.

[Stuartbe]

It may be that your firewall is delaying or interupting the dhcp packets. If the system is stopping for a long time at the splash screen then I would put money on theblueraja being correct in his diagnosis !

[TheBlueRaja]

*assumes your running Win XP*

Open up a command prompt (Start / Run -> cmd)

type ipconfig /all

This will tell you your IP details then when it works do the same command again. Is there any difference?

169.254 addy's are what you normally get BEFORE your assigned DHCP if i remember correctly.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

*assumes your running Win XP*

Open up a command prompt (Start / Run -> cmd)

type ipconfig /all

This will tell you your IP details then when it works do the same command again. Is there any difference?

169.254 addy's are what you normally get BEFORE your assigned DHCP if i remember correctly.

Right, slightly delayed, but I've now followed your instructions to use ipconfig /all. I do have Win XP HE.

Until I got an Internet connection, I continually obtained: Autoconfiguration IP address: 169.254.20.23.

When I finally obtained a connection after a delay of a few minutes (somewhere between 3 to 5, I'd estimate), I got : IP address: 80.2.199.86. At the same time, I got references to DHCP Server, DNS Server and various others. Is it worthwhile me phoning the ntl Tech Support and seeing what they have to say?

[porpoise]

I have a similar situation I get a message that Zone Alarm is waiting for the true vector internet to connect.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Right, slightly delayed, but I've now followed your instructions to use ipconfig /all. I do have Win XP HE.

Until I got an Internet connection, I continually obtained: Autoconfiguration IP address: 169.254.20.23.

When I finally obtained a connection after a delay of a few minutes (somewhere between 3 to 5, I'd estimate), I got : IP address: 80.2.199.86. At the same time, I got references to DHCP Server, DNS Server and various others. Is it worthwhile me phoning the ntl Tech Support and seeing what they have to say?

well if you phoned them and came through to me i would suggest to you that it is your firewall causing the problem.

try restarting the computer in safe mode with networking and see if it then picks up the ip address immediately on startup

MB

[TheBlueRaja]

Yeah,
its probably something on your machine otherwise i suppose lots of other people would have the same issue.

Try to disable Zonealarm so that it dosent load on your next boot and see if it makes it any quicker.

But im not so sure Monkeybreath - if something was blocking the DHCP requests then why does he get one eventually - UNLESS, there is a problem with your firewall and its blocking all traffic until it fully loads.

Maybe its waiting for something to load - look at your Event Viewer and see if a service or an app is not loading.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Try to disable Zonealarm so that it dosent load on your next boot and see if it makes it any quicker.

It may be better to try completely uninstalling ZoneAlarm (& make sure no trace of it is left), & then see how the connection is.

Sometimes ZA can still cause problems even if it has been shut down.

[Theodoric]

Thanks for the replies. I have got a firewall, but it's Sygate not Zone Alarm. I'll have a go seeing what disabling it does. The problem is liveable with (unless you've only got 5 minutes available!) but I would like to resolve it.

[MikeyB]

Hi Theodoric,

I use Sygate, the free one, and I do get a slight delay before I can use the internet till it's loaded & running, but it's only a matter of seconds, maybe 20 - 30 seconds at the most.
It very occasionally catches out my AV trying to look for an update before Sygate is running.

[Theodoric]

Just a final update. For unrelated reasons, I was recently fiddling with the Startup settings in MSconfig and I also ended up reinstalling the Sygate firewall. The delay problem now seems to have disappeared (at least for the past 2 days).

Obviously XP, ntl and Sygate move in extremely mysterious ways. I sometimes feel that burying a toad at a crossroads at the dark of the moon would be just as effective in solving problems.

[Nutty]

Something weird I get, is if I run mailwasher immediately on booting, it says theres no internet connection. I gotta load IE and goto a website before mailwasher will recognise the net connection. Weird.