Do you have a different NIC you could try?
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Do you have a different NIC you could try?
A different NIC? Don't think so. The only possibility is currently in my daughter's old tower, running W98. That one is significantly older than mine. It's not in active use, and I don't know whether I'd dare to remove the NIC. I have no idea what brand it is, only that it is older than mine. I vaguely remember installing it while she was still in school, so it's probably close to 15 years old.
Excellent! You have a
Gigabyte GA-7ZXE
Manual
http://www.giga-byte.co.za/Support/M...ProductID=1318
Chipset driver is dated 2001/10/25
So, yes it has been giving excellent service.
A clean install would speed the computer up but a new dual or better computer would sure be shockingly faster.
We have found , talking XP now, a clean install after 2 to 3 years really helped as that got rid of a bunch of garbage.
You should have a Frys not to far from you.
http://www.frys.com/ac/storelocator/index.jsp
Examples
http://www.frys.com/category/Outpost...+PCI+Adapters/
Yes, I'm surrounded by Frys. There are 3 within about a 15 minute drive. It's a good store to browse in, not bad to buy things, if you know exactly what you want. However, I've learned to never ask a question there. The staff seldom knows the answer. Even buying you have to be careful, as many items have been returned from previous purchases and are therefore suspect.
I much prefer Central Computer
The NIC card currently in my tower is one of the four shown in the Frys link.
A new install of XP? I last worked on the current XP install about a year and a half ago. I'm inclined to not mess with it now, for fear of harming it. The thread from that time:
Getting XP running
I'm going to drop off for a day or so at this point while I install TurboTax. The updates on that always seem to take forever. I'll be doing taxes this weekend, mine and my daughter's. Always a stressful time.
I'll be back, maybe check in on a break from taxes.
I understand the hesitation and done the taxes already.
Retired, so ours are probably simpler than yours.
Sales people are very poor techs, I agree!
Take your time, and setting up a dual boot remember to install the oldest version first.
Oh, that's Great SIR !!
I'm back. Taxes are done, Fed and state for me, Fed and state for my daughter. They always make for an interesting weekend.
Now back to the question at hand, my slow download and upload speeds. Is it the cable modem I'm renting from Comcast, the fact that the rest of my system is so old, or something we haven't touched on yet?
I think the next step will be trying a somewhat better modem, but not as good as the SB6121. I have the option of turning my current modem in to Comcast and asking for a newer one. That would seem to be a better way to test the modem without actually buying another. I think they will supply only DOCSIS 2 modems, which might be safer than trying a DOCSIS 3.
Before you do the exchange bit.
Go into device manager and remove the nic, reboot, now test again.
Think the nic drivers could be corrupted a bit. Seeings as other computers seem to run full speed, I see the problem as being in that computer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Train
I did as you suggested--uninstalled the NIC, rebooted, and tested again. There wasn't much difference.
I tested at Speedtest, uninstalled the NIC, rebooted (the NIC installed itself automatically without even telling me it was missing), tested again at the same server (Internode in San Jose).
Before: Ping=25, d/l=1.47, u/l=2.20
After: Ping-25, d/l=1.71, u/l=2.24
Is there any other component which might be causing this slowness? Could it be the cable modem?
I'm not sure we tested the rent-a-modem with my daughter's laptop. I think we might have tested only the sb6121 with her laptop.
I think I remember a router in the mix, if yes, remove your cat 5 and plug it into a different port on the router.
If not change, the power cycle the router. And test.
If no help, then it is time for a new nic.
Yes, there is a router, an older USR5462. It has one ethernet cable input (from the cable modem), and four ethernet cable output ports. I have two output ports in use. One goes directly to my computer tower, and the other into a circuit serving the rest of the house. All client systems are currently hardwired--my tower and my wife's Netflix.Quote:
Originally Posted by Train
The only option for moving cables is on the output ports. Is that what you mean? I currently have the Netflix box on Lan1 and my tower on Lan2. Lan3 and Lan4 are not in use.
Sorry been out of town. And where I was has not internet or cell phone coverage.
Yes , just use one of the 2 ports that are not used now on the router.
Peaceful, isn't it, not having a phone. Glad to see you back, though.
I moved the cables. Netflix is now on Lan3, and the computer on Lan4.
Ping was 35ms, d/l was 2.68, and u/l was 3.39. That's an improvement, but not as much as I was hoping for.
I may have to learn to be satisfied.
Peaceful is right. And enjoyed.
That the speed for both the laptop and desktop?
Now you are getting Economy speeds.
Economy - 1.5 Mbps downstream, 384 kbps upstream
Economy Plus - 3 Mbps downstream, 768kbps upstream
Performance Starter - 6 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream
Performance - 15 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream
Blast - 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream
Extreme - 50 Mbps downstream, 10 Mbps upstream
Extreme 105 - 105 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/C...s-Again-112865
Might want to read this too.
http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Connect...r/td-p/1243701
My latest test.
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/im.../2012/04/3.png
I just had a thought strike me, like a brick in the back of the head.:mad:
I suddenly thought about the driver for my NIC card. I have a D-Link DFE-530TX+, with driver v.3.46.xx. I went to the D-Link site looking at drivers. The current driver listed for that NIC is v.8.xx. The new driver will run under both W2K and XP, so I should be safe upgrading to that, shouldn't I?
Is this advisable? Safe?:confused:
NIC Site
I sure would update the driver.
I've updated the NIC driver with v8.xx. That was the total package, covering all possible applications apparently. The part of the package which applied to my system, W2K and XP, updated my drivers to 3.69.xx, from, if I remember correctly, 3.46.xx. That's not a real significant jump, and on the single test run so far, has made no difference.:(
Had hopes. :(:(
If you haven't already done so, it might be time to try a new NIC. You can get decent ones for $15 plus shipping.
I agree!Quote:
Originally Posted by jdc2000
I'm beginning to agree. Everything else seems to be working well enough, so it might be the NIC itself. This is supposed to be a good card, but even good cards go bad, I guess.
Found this at Newegg. A possibility. I don't want to spent too much. Paid property taxes yesterday, and will feel the pain for a while.
Startech NIC
I'm not familiar with Startech, so will rely somewhat on opinion here.
That one is decent. So are these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833166005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833166004
Okay. I just ordered a new NIC card, a Rosewill 404. It sounded a bit better than my original choice.
They claim it will be here in 4-7 days. No real rush on this since I have a working system.
Many thanks to all who helped in this rather long process. I'll report again on the results after I install the new card.
Please let us know. I be right curious!
Okay, I'm about ready to admit defeat on this, and accept the slower speeds.
I installed the new Rosewill RC-404 this morning. Easy job. It seemed to want a driver from RealTek, from the installation disk which came with the NIC.
Speeds did not change appreciably. They're still at the bottom end of the scale.
There should be no read difference, should there, whether my computer receives it's signal by hardwire or wireless? I've always had it set up with both. I'll have to explore this a bit further.
"whether my computer receives it's signal by hardwire or wireless?"
Depending how far you are from the router, yes there can be a world of a difference. Let alone that wireless is generally slower than wired.
The router is about 8 feet from the computer, same room. That shouldn't make too great a difference.
Last night I pulled the wireless receiver off the tower, and speed seems to increase marginally. That would seem to indicate that if both hardwire and wireless are connected, then the wireless takes precedence over the hardwire.Can this be true? Or does one just interfere with the other?
It's got to be the rest of my system, old and slow, which is causing the slowdown. Remember the fact that my daughter's laptop is significantly faster using the same cable modem.
If the computer is still slow using a wired connection (make sure the wireless is temporarily disabled), check the ethernet cable. It should be wired one of two ways, or it won't work properly, though it might work slowly.
Ethernet cable wiring color sequences:
http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Network-Cable
Now I'm a bit baffled. I just booted into XP (as apposed to my normal W2K) and was promptly told that the system had found new hardward, the new NIC card. I loaded the driver from the CD as requested. Then I ran Speedtest.
I ran Speedtest three successive times, just to be sure. the results are ping, dowenload, and upload.
1) 35, 9.70, 3.96
2) 31, 12.87 4.01
3) 33, 11.33, 3.84
:D
This leads to all sorts of questions. Did my speeds change so dramatically because I switched to XP? Because the XP driver is superior? What happened?
Any thoughts?
Sure looks like that to me.
Also, double check speed setting for the nic in w2k. XP would hurt either.
FROM:
Ping was 35ms, d/l was 2.68, and u/l was 3.39
to
33, 11.33, 3.84
is a nice improvement.
It's got to be the OS--W2K vs XP.
I checked this morning, and both OS's are using the same driver, Realtek 5.719.325.2009, and both are set at 100 Mbps Full Duplex. Could it be that W2K cannot take advantage of the faster speed setting of 100 Mbps and reverts to something considerably slower? Have I missed a setting in W2K?
What is it about XP which makes my connection speed so much better?
The only thing I can think of is a nasty of some sort in w2k.
... flushing the DNS and renew the IPs:
At Start>Run, type in cmd -->OK. At the comand prompt, type in ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter. At the command prompt again, type in ''ipconfig /renew and press Enter.
Okay, I did that. My speeds improved only marginally, probably not significantly.
Ping=25, D/L=2.47, U/L=3.60
W2k has me beat. Sorry, but that is best I can do with it.
I thank you, sir, for all the help you've given me, both on this and other questions in the past. I guess some questions just aren't meant to be answered.
I'll leave this open, in the event that somebody has any ideas, but I won't pursue it as strongly. It's time to think more seriously about migrating to XP.
Again, thank you for all your time and effort.
If you're going to migrate, I highly recommend migrating to Windows 7.
XP will be useless (no more security updates) in less than two years.
But I already have XP. Remember, this is a dual-boot machine--W2K and XP. When I say migrate that would mean getting all my programs running on the XP side, and changing the boot ini. On top of that, I don't believe this system would run W7. This machine is too old, and too lacking in resources.Quote:
Originally Posted by SpywareDr
Got it. Just hated to see someone invest all that time in an aging OS.
Yes, it will run Win 7. But do not try Vista as it will not install.