computer/internet stalls

RobertN · Dec 13, 2002

Help!
When I am on-line, my PC acts wierd. It will "stall" when loading mail or web pages(like TBN). It happens randomly. Sometimes, things just whip right up on the screen. Other times they start to load, then stop, and then start again. Sometimes they stop for a moment, sometimes for minutes.

It is aggravating, because it extends my on-line time, both just sitting waiting for a page to load, and the phone bill for the hookup.

This has happened on three different ISP. Two were personal accounts, one was a corporate account at a big company that I know for sure was very good at thier end. It happened on three PC's, our old personal one, this personal one, and a work corporate notebook my wife used to have.

I looked on-line at my current ISP. It directed me towards some debug pages. The auto response was to make sure I had current drivers, and slow down the connection on my end. They indicated that it is probably the phone lines, and I am simply trying to connect and run too fast for the connection I have.

I downloaded current drivers, and stepped my modem speed down a step(from 38400 something to 19200 something) in the "system/modem properties" window. This did not seem to help. The little Windows connect window says I have a 56k connection... The modem is "Conextant MSP3880-U 56k" that came in the system(HP Vectra VL400).

Should I mess with my PC some more,, or call the phone company, or?

This has been going on for a long time, and my frustration level has just peaked! When it goes, it goes pretty good. But when it stalls, it just sits there.

AndyR · Dec 13, 2002

Have you checked the phone line for noise? Just pick up on that line when no modem is active and press any key (other then 0) to silence the dial tone. If you hear crackling noises come and go it is most likely water in the line. All the more frustrating because it usually dissapears by the time the telco guys come to fix it. There are other things you can check - but tell us your operating system first (i.e. Win95/98/2000/xp etc).

Hope this helps,

BB_TX · Dec 13, 2002

I have the same problem on both my home computer and my work computer. When a page "stalls" during loading, I click on the refresh button and, most of the time, it immediately loads correctly. I don't really understand how it all works, but I have read before that a request to open a web page may get routed thru numerous servers to get to the final link. Some times the path is so inefficient it just slows to a crawl. By refreshing, it sends a new request which may find a better path. Makes sense to me.

WVBill · Dec 13, 2002

Welcome to the "information super highway". You know how sometimes you get stuck in a traffic jam and bump along stop and go for a mile then all of a sudden traffic moves out at speed and you never did see the accident? Same explanation to your question here..../w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

SteveV · Dec 13, 2002

A couple of things come to mind: Point tractor toward city, wrap chain around house, drive until you see coax or fiber. Idea 2: there's lots of neat stuff out in space, get a dish. Or idea 3: fix what you got. Get picky about what's happening on your machine, look at current processes, CPU useage, watch the lights on the modem, and find the garbage that's slowing you down. Did it ever work good? Time a file download of know size. If the phonebook still has a section on party lines you're in trouble. Lastly, find the restore disk and start over. Changing ISP's tend to leave lots of junk behind. SteveV

RobertN · Dec 13, 2002

This is a Win98 system. I just tried listening to the phone as you mentioned; it was silent.

This has been going on for a long time. Our old Win95 system was slow enough, it was hard to tell if it was the system. This is a 1.1Ghz system I think, with 512M ram. It's not a super duper machine, but it's not terribly slow either. We got extra ram for scanning photo slides.

It works fine for everything else. But, my wife and I have been doing research for work(we work from the house), in addition to browsing TBN, YTmag.com, ect. It is frustrating to try and find stuff and get things done when it stalls out.

I do notice that sometimes it seems to hold the system up too, cause the mose will be slow to move(not all the times it happens though.

I referenced this page: <A target="_blank" HREF=http://808hi.com/56k/tshoot.asp>http://808hi.com/56k/tshoot.asp</A>

RobertN · Dec 13, 2002

We're outside the area's for the fancy connection lines. Things are a little tight now, a dish is out of the question right now.

No, it has never worked great. We used to work for a big company that makes the CPU's for most of these PC's. They had great connections for tying in to work. Niether this PC nor our notebooks from work did any better. We even had slow downs logging in to work when we used to be at the "company". That's why we suspect the incoming phone line, but are unsure of how to prove that. I could try another line, but it is a pain to get the PC out from it's nook and move somewhere else besides the desk.

We have cleaned up and defragmented. We have minimized stuff running in the background or automatically(hate those things anyways).

There are no party lines around here(Shingle Springs, Ca, about 45 minutes east of Sacramento Ca).

With nothing else going, the Win98 resource meter shows sys resource 45% free, user resource 45% free, and GDI resource 71% free. I guess that's not that great considering that's two browser windows open, and an internet connection.
When I opened the second window, and did a web page load, it did stall for a minute, but the resource meter did not change at all...

We thought about a restore, but just are not sure if we should pursue that or the modem or phone line.

SteveV · Dec 13, 2002

Based on that, here's a little story: Situation- dialup lousy, dial tone unavailable about 1 out of ten tries. Phone co lineperson says it must be me. Plugging the handset in the house interface jack revealed the problem. The jumper from the connecting studs to the modular had lost its tension; problem fix for $1.29 by yours truly. Moral: segment and isolate! Watch to make sure that phoneline is kept at full speed while you're waiting. Take a close look at the wiring. Plug in direct to the street with nothing else on the line. SteveV

Inspector507 · Dec 13, 2002

RobertN,
Sometimes at work, using a T-1 connection, web pages seem to lock up on me too. I just hit stop, back and click the link again.........always goes through the second time.

DocHeb · Dec 13, 2002

As mentioned elsewhere - look for other running processes. One pervasive problem is the Trojan spyware that get inserted onto your computer from web sites. They report back to their masters with all kinds of bandwidth stealing information. I read in PC Magazine about <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.lavasoft.de/>Ad-Aware</A>, a Trojan-deleting program. The first time I ran it it found 98 different programs and files that were spying on me. I deleted them all and my system ran a lot smoother.

There was an interesting side-affect. Apparently one of the spyware programs was linked to Norton System Works. After deleting all the Trojans, my Norton Antivirus wouldn't update - I finally called Norton. "So you ran Ad-Aware and Norton Antivirus stopped working ... we'll have to give you a new password". The more conspiritorial minded would conclude that Norton was spying! Subsequent Ad-Aware runs haven't shut down any other of my programs.

I've also upgraded to IE 6.0 and it has improved security/privacy features. I ended up blocking most of the Trojan cookie sites and don't get new ones too often.