Slow broadband / possible timeouts?

[MarkBooth]

I've just become a member of nthw, so please go easy on me!!

A friend of mine has recently got broadband (150K) and cable TV. He's using a 750mhz PC and has no problem with the cable TV. It's the broadband thats the bu**er!

I spent last weekend working through what I know about connections and what trouble I had setting up my own machine, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with his setup, but the setup refused to do the DHCP tests.
This was sorted by the engineer who went to his house some time during the week.

The engineer sorted the problem to get my friend's account registered, but now his connection is running really S-L-O-W. The engineer came back out and tried the connection on his (the engineers) laptop, and it went at a reasonable rate, and got told that it must be his own computer that's at fault.

Would you have any idea as to why his connection would be slow on his own machine? He's giving NTL another week to sort it out (it's been going on for the last month like this).

Cheers

PS: My mate and I live a mile from one another, if this helps.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by MarkBooth

I've just become a member of nthw, so please go easy on me!!

A friend of mine has recently got broadband (150K) and cable TV. He's using a 750mhz PC and has no problem with the cable TV. It's the broadband thats the bu**er!

I spent last weekend working through what I know about connections and what trouble I had setting up my own machine, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with his setup, but the setup refused to do the DHCP tests.
This was sorted by the engineer who went to his house some time during the week.

The engineer sorted the problem to get my friend's account registered, but now his connection is running really S-L-O-W. The engineer came back out and tried the connection on his (the engineers) laptop, and it went at a reasonable rate, and got told that it must be his own computer that's at fault.

Would you have any idea as to why his connection would be slow on his own machine? He's giving NTL another week to sort it out (it's been going on for the last month like this).

Cheers

PS: My mate and I live a mile from one another, if this helps.

a few questions for you:
- which version of windows?
- usb or ethernet?
- has his computer been on the internet before?
- does he have a firewall?
- have you done an online speed test? if so, what are the results?
- trying pinging and trace routing to various sites inside and outside of ntl... eg www.ntlworld.com, www.nildram.net, www.bbc.co.uk and posting the times that you are getting
- also reboot the pc, and type 'netstat -a' at a command prompt, and let us know how many connections it is showing.

hth

[rdhw]

Originally Posted by MarkBooth

now his connection is running really S-L-O-W. The engineer came back out and tried the connection on his (the engineers) laptop, and it went at a reasonable rate, and got told that it must be his own computer that's at fault.

This is a reasonable conclusion, if service on the engineer's laptop was OK. So the best thing would be to carry out some investigation on the state of your friend's PC, and let us know the results. Along with the previous poster's suggestions, you should check out the PC for the possible presence of worms/viruses, etc.

[Sociable]

Originally Posted by MarkBooth

I've just become a member of nthw, so please go easy on me!!

First of all a great big WELCOME to nthw Mark most don't bite.

Unless asked to nicely of course.

As the others have said, if another PC has been able to use the connection without problems this does point to it being something specific about the setup your friend is using.

Give us the basic details asked for like which Operating system he uses and confirm if you have Anti virus/firewall installed and which version of IE you are on as well.

Just to give you an idea of how seemingly unconnected things can affect speed I frequently have found something as simple as disabling the property handler for AVI's in XP can give dramatic results because it frees up system resources if any incomplete avi files are on the HD.

I'm sure between us we can track the problem down once we have a few more clues to go on.

Once again Welcome to the forum.

[MarkBooth]

Just a few specs for my friends machine:
He's running Windows 98SE.
He's on an Ethernet connection.
He has been on the internet before, with Freeserve if I recall.
And he's running Internet Explorer 5.5.

He does NOT have anti-virus, and has deleted his Zone Alarm firewall.

Hope this helps

[th'engineer]

Originally Posted by MarkBooth

Just a few specs for my friends machine:
He's running Windows 98SE.
He's on an Ethernet connection.
He has been on the internet before, with Freeserve if I recall.
And he's running Internet Explorer 5.5.

He does NOT have anti-virus, and has deleted his Zone Alarm firewall.

Hope this helps

First of all get an antivirus and firewall and remove any freeserve software.

Download adaware or spybot and make sure you have no spyware running on the PC

Then change the dns to another other than NTL and it should help

[Sociable]

Ok a few suggestions to get you started.

First is get antivirus up and running and do a full scan to eliminate virus and or trojan activity being the cause.

Next make sure they run a spyware checker like adaware to clear out the inevitable spyware on the system.

The last suggestion is to check out the various threads here about using a specified proxy as many have found this has greatly enhanced browsing speeds.

Hope one of these suggestions will bear some fruit.

Meantime post back once you have checked if any help improve things to let us know if they worked or not.

EDIT: GMTA th'engineer

[tkiely]

Sometimes the best thing you can do to fix a 98 pc is a full reload of the OS!

sounds drastic, but if you have the driver diskd for the componenets it is very easy and almost always leaves you with a much better experience.

98 gets confused and tired over the years, I wonder when your friend last rebuilt his pc?

Terry