Intermittent connectivity driving me insane.

[chihlidog]

I'd be extremely grateful if you guys could help me figure out why my work PC is doing this, it's driving me insane. We're on a small network. Verizon DSL into router, then router to computers. There are 3 total PCs on the network, and the other 2 are fine but mine is barely connected.

Everything shows normal, but the connection works when it wants to. I can click a page, go up and get a glass of water, and come back and it's still hanging. SOMETIMES. For a few minutes here and there, it works normally. Here's what really kills me, let's say I click 2 tabs open at the same time, they will both hang for a while, then both load a tiny bit at the same time, like it has a burst of connectivity for a second, then loses it, then gets it back.

Another twist: if I unplug the ethernet cable for a minute and then plug it back in, the connection is solid for 5-10 minutes. Then goes back to this intermittent BS. I'm on an old hp, dual core AMD Athlon 5000+ with 2 gigs of ram running XP.

Here's what I've done so far:

Checked the connection to the router physically, and switched out my cable to another port that I know is fully functional (coworker was plugged in there and her PC has zero connectivity issues)

Switched out ethernet cables (this fixes it for about 5 minutes)

Switched the DNS to the google public DNS (8.8.8.8) This had no effect.

Disabled QoS, no effect whatsoever

Disabled client for Microsoft networks, no effect


Honestly I am at the point where I am wondering if my physical network adapter is just shot, but it doesnt make sense to me why it would be solid for a few minutes after changing the cable.

ANY ideas would be much appreciated. I am at the end of my rope with thiis.

 

[donfm]

I'd be extremely grateful if you guys could help me figure out why my work PC is doing this, it's driving me insane. We're on a small network. Verizon DSL into router, then router to computers. There are 3 total PCs on the network, and the other 2 are fine but mine is barely connected.

Everything shows normal, but the connection works when it wants to. I can click a page, go up and get a glass of water, and come back and it's still hanging. SOMETIMES. For a few minutes here and there, it works normally. Here's what really kills me, let's say I click 2 tabs open at the same time, they will both hang for a while, then both load a tiny bit at the same time, like it has a burst of connectivity for a second, then loses it, then gets it back.

Another twist: if I unplug the ethernet cable for a minute and then plug it back in, the connection is solid for 5-10 minutes. Then goes back to this intermittent BS. I'm on an old hp, dual core AMD Athlon 5000+ with 2 gigs of ram running XP.

Here's what I've done so far:

Checked the connection to the router physically, and switched out my cable to another port that I know is fully functional (coworker was plugged in there and her PC has zero connectivity issues)

Switched out ethernet cables (this fixes it for about 5 minutes)

Switched the DNS to the google public DNS (8.8.8.8) This had no effect.

Disabled QoS, no effect whatsoever

Disabled client for Microsoft networks, no effect


Honestly I am at the point where I am wondering if my physical network adapter is just shot, but it doesnt make sense to me why it would be solid for a few minutes after changing the cable.

ANY ideas would be much appreciated. I am at the end of my rope with thiis.

I had a similar issue with disconnects and long loading times for a page. Finally tried a new router and it's been good ever since. Apparently my router was going bad. If your router is old it maybe going bad. Have you tried resetting your router after this happens? Does it help? Try another NIC on your computer see if the problem goes away.

 

[spidey07]

Open a command prompt and run a continuous ping to your default gateway. Then you can see if you've got reachability to your router and can troubleshoot from there.

"ping <gateway IP> -t"

 

[chihlidog]

I had a similar issue with disconnects and long loading times for a page. Finally tried a new router and it's been good ever since. Apparently my router was going bad. If your router is old it maybe going bad. Have you tried resetting your router after this happens? Does it help? Try another NIC on your computer see if the problem goes away.

Router is only about 3 months old. I tried another port that I know is working, no difference whatsoever. Acts exactly the same. I've reset the router countless times, same thing happens.

I dont have another NIC lying around or I'd slap it in and hopefully be done with the whole issue.

Ping is good. Consistent.

 

[donfm]

Router is only about 3 months old. I tried another port that I know is working, no difference whatsoever. Acts exactly the same. I've reset the router countless times, same thing happens.

I dont have another NIC lying around or I'd slap it in and hopefully be done with the whole issue.

Ping is good. Consistent.

If it's an intermittent problem those can be a bitch to find and recreate the configuration that is causing it in order to troubleshoot.....best of luck finding your issue.

 

[chihlidog]

Thing is, its slow almost all the time. But then it goes through brief periods of being completely fine. NOTHING changes, no cables, no restarts, nothing. It just......usually kinda sucks, then sucks BADLY for a while, and sometimes is decent. Nothing triggers it. Not that I can find anyway. It really is driving me insane.

 

[spidey07]

Really sounds like a cable problem or duplex mismatch. Make sure NIC is set to autonegotiate speed/duplex and use a new store bought cable. Some NICs are better at dealing with substandard cabling.

If you don't lose any pings you have good reachability, just poor performance.

 

[Lemon law]

I had a similar problem previously on another computer, and traced it down to a bad NIC. I replaced the NIC and the problem went away.

But I also found I could fix the problem another way by setting a static rather than a dynamic address for that given PC. So that whenever that bad NIC reset itself, it could find it's actual network gateway and its network address.

After all, simple logic tells us that the problem does not lie in the OP's router, as it functions for all other computer with the OP's old AMD being the lone ranger.

 

[chihlidog]

BUMP.

I've replaced the NIC and it has been acting exactly the same. Our office IT consultants have suggested that I reformat...they cannot seem to track down the problem. Any suggestions before I do that?

 

[imagoon]

Download one of the Linux boot CD's try surfing the web in that for a few hours. If the issue never appears, there might be a virus / bad driver / whatever on Windows. If the issue appear in the Linux boot cd gui, then the issue is hardware / not the computer.