Internet Slowing Down

[SixtyFour]

Hi all,

Recently, I picked up a refurbished Dell (running Win7 Pro 32bit) and decided that I would stick it in my living room to mess around with. Today, I hooked it up and plugged into it a Linksys AE6000 so I could connect it to the internet. Now, a problem has arisen. When I first start the computer up, the internet is good and fast -- no problems. However, after a minute or so, the internet begins to progressively slow down, eventually slowing down so much that a web page cannot load. From the end of the PC, everything looks fine. The internet stays connected at full strength. However, I have looked at it from the "connected devices" page of my router settings, and I see that it is constantly appearing and disappearing from that page. I am confused as to what is going on and how to fix it and was hoping that you all could help.

Thank you in advance.

Edit, Quick Update: After leaving the computer running for about 20 minutes, the connection remains at "full strength" but now has the yellow thing with the "!" over top of the strength bar, meaning "limited access."

Edit 2: And, after another few minutes, the "limited access" thing has gone away.

 

[King107s]

Could be a virus... try rebooting in safe mode with networking and see if the problem persists.

 

[SixtyFour]

I have already eliminated the possibility of it being a virus -- I re-installed Windows earlier today and the problem still persists.

Thank you for your suggestion.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Windows Automatic updates hogging your internet perhaps.
Turn that to manual, and reboot.

If that doesn't help, you could run TCPView to see what programs are online. Check for unknown programs eating up your bandwidth.

 

[Mpegger]

When you say "connected" are you connecting wirelessly, or wired?

If wired, I'd say you have a problem with either the wire, the connector or jack, which is causing it to lose connection. Being that it is refurbished, it could also be any number of other issues (oxidation on the connectors, bad caps, bad NIC), but I'd go with playing around with the wire first.

If wireless, you might be in a bad location that is being blocked or too much interference from other WiFi units nearby.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

If wireless, you might be in a bad location that is being blocked or too much interference from other WiFi units nearby.

And in those scenarios download a wifi analyser and find a channel with the least usage and overlap. Most people leave their wifi channel on auto. Tends to make lower channels more congested. If you can get onto channels 12, 13 or 14 quite often there's nobody using them.

I'd say 80% of the time on a wired connection it's the cable at fault.

Also good to check your Internet providers not having issues in your area before you go fault finding

 

[SixtyFour]

Apologies for not clearly specifying -- I am connected wirelessly via a Linksys AE6000 USB WiFi adapter. Thanks to all of you for the suggestions; I will give them a shot and report back.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

Here's a pc wifi analyser https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/wlan-software/wlan-scanner-acrylic-wifi-free/

Not tried it myself but it looks like it will do the job.

The other thing to mess with is the encryption and wireless modes your pc/router communicate with.

Try turning off the auto negotiate and pick the most modern protocols your pc can handle.

Positioning your router high up in a room can give a slight signal boost.

Finding the least congested channels using the wifi scanner may yield the best improvement.

Edit: Oh and look into if your using the latest drivers for the pc wifi. Software issues involving the wifi driver can cause all this fun your having. Look for a dedicated driver ensuring windows has not resorted to a generic wifi driver.

 

[SixtyFour]

Thanks again; I try those things this evening.

Up until a couple weeks ago I had a different computer in the exact same place in that room connected via a Netgear brand WiFi adapter. That worked for 3 years, it is just all a bit confusing to me how all of this stuff with channels and encryption and all that other stuff could need to be changed with the addition of this new computer and adapter. I hate technology sometimes.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

What router are you using. I can have a read at the manual.

I'm only sat watching a film about the war of independence... I think I have a clue how it ends
(full of historical inaccuracies... They were fighting in fields of rapeseed earlier. Back then rapeseed was regarded as a weed Holywood armatures. Lol)

 

[SixtyFour]

NetGear WGR614v9

Thank you

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

Cool. I'm familiar with netgears router homepage.



Set your channel from auto to the highest number then work your way down and see what your wifi analyser says regarding signal strength.

Security. WPA2 mode.

You can reach your router in your Web browser address 192.168.1.1

​

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

Oh. Your default pass is user admin password is password
if you are flying with default password then you may want to change that for securities sake.

 

[SixtyFour]

Just went in and tried to begin testing as you said (changed to channel 11). I went to the computer, and now the problem is even worse than it was yesterday. There is now no progressive slow down. I turn the computer on and can access the internet for about a minute; then, nothing. The computer still seems to think it is connected (the little WiFi icon remains at full connection strength), but I cannot access the internet.

I have also discovered that, not only restarting the computer, but also un-plugging and re-plugging the WiFi adapter causes the internet to come back up on the computer for about a minute. I am starting to think that the adapter may be the problem, but it is still odd to me that it connects perfect for that first minute.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

Hmm, that usb wifi dongle is having fun then.

Any issues listed under device manager for the wifi or usb?
Are you using the latest driver?
http://www.mediatek.com/_en/07_downloads/01_windows.php
Try the above driver... It's the correct chipset for the Linksys AE6000

Seems a few people have been having fun with corruption issues.

Give your router a factory reset too... Sometimes they get all confused if devices they communicate with are sending a load of garbage back at them.

 

[SixtyFour]

No issues under device manager.
I have tried both the disked driver that came with the device and the latest version off of their website; both had the same issue.
The page you listed gives me a 404 error.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

I guess mediatek have changed there website around since the person at lynksys posted the link.

Try different usb ports.

I'll have a think as to what's next lol

 

[SixtyFour]

I have tried every USB port on the system; same problem in all of them.

Additionally, I did turn off Windows auto-update to be sure that wasn't the problem, and also monitored the processes that were using network connections. Nothing looked out of the ordinary there.

I reset my router and upgraded to the latest firmware while I was at it. I will now test again and report back.

Edit: Still having the same problem after resetting the router to factory defaults.

 

[BobbyBubblehead]

Click on your network icon.
Goto network and sharing.
Delete the Linksys connection.
Just to eliminate windows being horribly confused.

See if you can setup a connection again.

Maybe the dongle is about fried... They all fail sooner or later. They just wear out with age.

I'll ponder the situation some more...

 

[SixtyFour]

Disconnecting from and reconnecting to the connection also caused the internet to come back up for about a minute. Alas, it did go back down again.

The thing is brand new, so I wouldn't imagine age would be what got it. I have considered from the start that the thing may just be broken out of the box, but it just doesn't make sense to me as to how it stays working for that first minute and works again after: restarting the pc, unplugging and replugging, and reconnecting to the network. That just seems more like a driver/software deal than a hardware deal to me.

Edit: For the first time, the internet did begin working again by itself. Not all the way, however. It came back up but does not load images; loads the internet pages in some kind of weird text form, ect.

Edit 2: And, in fact, the internet is staying up now. It is, as I said, however, not loading pages properly.