Question about high speed net being slow, could it be the Card?

[matt012]

Hi. My friend just recently got high speed internet hooked up to her computer. It's a Celeron 400mhz, 56MB Ram, Windows ME, a computer that in my opinion should run the internet fine. The high speed net is being slow though, as slow as dial-up or slower. What could be causing this? Would an ethernet card not working properly be the problem? Any help would be great. Thanks.

[pentachris]

Spyware, adware, viruses, etc. eating up bandwidth & cpu cycles are possibilities. Run a virus scan with up-to-date definitions and scan it with Adaware and Spybot S&D. See if that helps.

[bassman]

It's a Celeron 400mhz, 56MB Ram, Windows ME, a computer that in my opinion should run the internet fine.
I'm guessing that 56 MB Ram is a typo and should read 256 MB Ram.
If not, that would be a concern for me running ME. Since that is not a valid number rating for RAM, I will assume it is 256.
I would also check for unnecessary background programs and shut them down. If youn need help with this, just let us know.

Good luck
Frank :cool:

[classicsoftware]

It's not a typo at all Bassman.

They have 64 MB of RAm and 8MB of shared video RAM that uses 8 MB of system RAM as video RAM and leaves 56MB of system RAM. This very common in machines of this vintage.

This is really not enough RAM to perform the way you would like. I would add some more RAM to this PC to make it perform better.

[Paul Komski]

It's not long since there was a very similar question raised about RAM and download speeds. This system should operate fine on the hardware outlined (even though more RAM might be nice) and downloading is not a memory-intensive activity so I would be looking at spyware or at the way your hardware is configured (correct and updated drivers and so on).

[matt012]

I'm thinking it might be the ethernet card itself. I used to have the computer here, and I think there was something about it not working right. So i'm going to take a newer card that I have over to her and install it and then try it. I don't think it would be ad-ware or anything, she just got the net, and I had done full scans on that stuff before.

[zerocommazero]

are there other PCs using or sharing the connection? Not that it would slow that much but could be used to test the connection with. If the card isn't the issue, try reinitialising the modem and any other hardware involved between the pc and broadband line. Also kill any running apps like antivirus and such to see if they are really taking that much of a toll on memory. Just a few suggestions.

[zerocommazero]

also check cable quality. see if you get alot of packet loss using netstat (which is probably not on ME).

[no-mbr]

"""downloading is not a memory-intensive activity so I would be looking at spyware or at the way your hardware is configured (correct and updated drivers and so on)."""

I wouldn't rule out anything. There are number of "background" programs that attempt network connection to home servers or "shares" on a local subnet -- that do in fact slow and otherwise foul-up normal network or DSL connections.

I've had first hand experience with things like "netsky" and blaster variants producing symptons such as "slow network".....

Learn how run msinfo32.exe, check the running tasks and load modules section before doing anything else. If you don't know why non-microsoft files are loading, search the Internet using their names for a search value.

[Dragono]

Also, try downloading firefox, it made my high speed conection go much faster then it was on Internet Explorer.