Broadband speed

Really puzzled. Over the last 5 months my broadband speed has progressively decreased until it is now around 1.1Mbps for downloads, in August it was 9.5Mbps. Now I am coming up for contract renewal and have spoken to my ISP who has stated that I should be getting up to 38Mbps. There are several pc's in the house, so I have checked download speeds on my partner's laptop and pc as well as our media pc. In all cases download speeds are around the 32Mbps mark for wired and 24Mbps for wireless. So the fault MUST be with my pc right? I have scanned for viruses and malware (AVG, Spybot, and Malwarebytes), checked that I only have one firewall in place; checked all background processes; checked for cpu hungry add-ons; defraged the hard drives; run AVG pc tune-up to get rid of old registry keys, missing short cuts etc etc.
At this point I was running out of ideas until a friend of mine wanted something done with his pc as it was running slow (aka full of s**t). After dealing with this I was running online checks with it only to discover that it had the same pathetic download speed as my pc, and guess what? It too has XP as an operating system. I have since got hold of another XP machine (from a household dump!) and that too has the same issue. So it would appear that running XP gives increasingly poor download speed. Anyone else suffered from this? Any solutions?

 

does the same issue occur in Safe mode with networking??

if so then it is some third party interference

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DO NOT use registry cleaners unless you know exactly what you are removing, see the link below:

http://chris.pirillo.com/are-registry-cleaners-safe-to-use/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markruss.../02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2005/04/why-i-dont-use-registry-cleaners/

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have you right clicked on your network connections and chosen repair??

start, control panel, network connections, when you do this if it stops or cannot complete a step let me know what the step was.

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I am very surprised that the ISP did not provide more help.

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is this a wireless broadband or an ethernet cable connection??

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any warnings in device manager??

 

Hi Elizabeth,

Absolutely amazed at how fast you got back to me! Many Thanks. To answer your questions in order:-

In Safe mode with networking it won't access the internet at all.

Point well made on registry cleaners. will steer clear in future.

Tried repair made no difference.

In fairness to the ISP, having been told I should get 38Mbps, and finding that I am getting that (or pretty damn close) on the media pc which is cable connected, didn't chase them any more.

It's a wireless connection, although I did test it with a cable connection some time ago, and got a slight lift in speed (which I expected).

2 warnings in device manager. One unknown device of unknown origin which I deleted. 1 video controller which I obtained an updated driver for. Once I restarted the machine after this I found an amazing lift in speed. I am getting around 16Mbps. OK that might be half what I should be getting but it's going the right way.

Given that I have got such an improvement on one driver replacement, I wonder whether a general driver update is in order, however I am cautious about the various driver update programmes that are out there. Any recommendations, our should I be concentrating my efforts elsewhere?

Also should I move the machine down to the router and cable it up and try your point number 1? (Safe mode with networking)

Many many thanks for the help,
John

 

Hi,

I have dragged the pc downstairs and connected it to the modem by ethernet cable. Ran another speed test, and hey presto, loads of speed, but very, very, inconsistent. Anything between 2Mbps and 96Mbps! The graph of the test looked like a mountain range. So tried again in Safe mode with networking. Much better, 35.65 Mbps and a graph that whilst not that even, had reduced to a set of foothills rather than the Alps. So there is something in normal working that is affecting the speed giving an inconsistent reading. Also whilst other machines I have show around a 7% difference in speed between wireless and ethernet cable. This is showing a 100% difference.

Any ideas welcome, but if this can't be fixed at lease it's 15 times faster than it was!

John

 

do you have windows handling the wireless connection??

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safe mode loads the very minimum of drivers, so if something works fine in either safe mode, then there is a third party interference.

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as for drivers , you should go to your pc manufactures website to download drivers. I have a Dell, and get my drivers from them.

what is your make, model, and model number of your pc and I can see if I can find a link to the driver download page.

 

Hi,

No I have a Tenda router and wireless dongle handling the connection. Should I try to revert to Windows?

Got that, just not sure how to track it down.

Ah yes..... Well I built this some years ago, and much of the paperwork went missing in my last move, so I guess I am on my own on this! Any suggestions about driver identifier programmes?

Many Thanks for your patience,

John

 

How To Find Drivers For An Unrecognized Device

1. Open Device Manager (Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager)
2. The hardware whose drivers are missing will appear as Unknown device, so it's easier to locate the device.
3. Right click on the unknown device and click on Properties.
4. Under the Properties window click on Details tab and select Device Instance Id from the drop down box.
5. You should see a code similar to this

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27DC&SUBSYS_30868086
&REV_01\4&1E46F438&0&40F0

6. The portion of the code highlighted in RED is the Vendor ID and the portion highlighted in GREEN is the Device ID. In this example:

Vendor ID = 8086
Device ID = 27DC

7. Once you have obtained both the IDs, proceed to PCI Database.

http://www.pcidatabase.com/

There you can either search for the vendor from the vendor ID or directly get information about the device along with the vendor name by searching with the device ID.

8. Then from there you can go directly to the hardware manufactureres website and get the driver.
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

autoruns is for what is starting up and below is process explorer for what is running after starting up:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

with the above you can research online by right clicking the item if you do not know what it does. And you can disable a startup item by unchecking the box, then if you find that you need it you can recheck the box.

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I have found and several others agree, but it is not a hard and fast rule, that with xp it is best to let windows handle the wireless connection, below are some sites to check out.

http://grok.lsu.edu/Article.aspx?articleid=5822

http://www.windstream.com/Support/How-do-I-set-up-my-wireless-connection-in-Windows-XP-/

and below is the search page , you might want to check out a few other articles on this:

https://www.google.com/#q=should+i+let+windows+handle+my+xp+wireless+connection

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EDIT: some say the SlimUtilities is a good driver program, I have not used it, but you could try it.

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I use SlimDrivers from SlimUtilities and find it quite good. Though my Graphics card seems to ignore most things, including SpeedFan, so not surprised it doesn't seem to be doing a lot with that.

https://www.slimwareutilities.com/slimdrivers.php

 

@ Jojo, sorry I could not remember the program you had recommended, thanks for setting me straight on that.

 

Thank you both for the advice.

 

you are welcome, are you set now??