Reply to: Windows 10 Pro sluggish internet

[Uncle Albert]

Do you have any dodgy electrical devices nearby?

Eldest son complained about how his wifi connection became unusable every evening. After quite a bit of digging around it turned out that the colour cycling/flashing/vomit inducing LED lights that he'd draped around the room were the problem. Turn them off and wifi was back to normal.

[gables]

Since then I've unplugged my wireless usb adapter and used my new cat7 cable to connect my pc to the modem/router. I then pinged google.com and the responses were around 9 or 10ms, which is better than I typically got with the wireless usb adapter (even though the modem/router is only about 6 feet away. My cat7 cable is 5m long.

I wonder if there is something about the wireless adapter that might be causing the problem. Strange how it is intermittent though; I would expect that hardware like that would either work all the time or not at all.

Given that distance I'd using a cable period.

Just had a thought, do you have a wireless keyboard\mouse? I recall I once had issues with WiFi after adding a wireless keyboard and mouse, changed them back to wired and WiFi was fine again.

[WTFH]

I was using the following (before I disconnected it and started using a cat7 network cable instead):

TP-Link TL-WN822N

And your Wi-Fi - what is that?
Also when you do a scan, what other Wi-Fi broadcasts are in the area, what channels are they using, what are all the devices connected to the same Wi-Fi, how many children do you have in your house, how many devices are on the same network, etc etc etc?

[jamsandwich]

what brand/model of wireless USB adapter are you using?

I was using the following (before I disconnected it and started using a cat7 network cable instead):

TP-Link TL-WN822N

[WTFH]

what brand/model of wireless USB adapter are you using?

[woody1]

...I would expect that hardware like that would either work all the time or not at all.

Me too, although I suppose it could be a software issue rather than the hardware itself.

[jamsandwich]

I was getting sluggish response in my browser earlier today. I tried tracert to google.com. Got one "* * * Request timed out" amongst 13 rows of results. The sluggishness seemed to go away after a minute or two.

Since then I've unplugged my wireless usb adapter and used my new cat7 cable to connect my pc to the modem/router. I then pinged google.com and the responses were around 9 or 10ms, which is better than I typically got with the wireless usb adapter (even though the modem/router is only about 6 feet away. My cat7 cable is 5m long.

I wonder if there is something about the wireless adapter that might be causing the problem. Strange how it is intermittent though; I would expect that hardware like that would either work all the time or not at all.

[woody1]

I'm using a wireless usb adaptor. I tried updating the driver (via Device Manager) and it did a search and reported "The best drivers for your device are already installed".

I've ordered a Cat7 network cable. I plan to try that as an alternative to the wireless usb adaptor.

I'm assuming your setup is something like this:

PC (wireless usb) -> Router -> Internet

When you're seeing hundreds of millisecond ping times to sites like bbc.com, try pinging the Router.

Another tool that can sometimes reveals something is tracert.

C:\>tracert bbc.com

(NB. you may see some lines with "* * * Request timed out" but this is normal going through an ISP network)

[jamsandwich]

Might be related to the "fast boot" option as this affects the "shutdown" option which is not as you think when "fast boot" is enabled (default), basically it's a hibernate-like state where everything is written to disk to enable a faster reboot, a restart though is a much cleaner restart and hence possibly why this worked for you.

Google Windows 10 shutdown vs restart or Windows 10 fast boot and make your mind up.

Personally I'd disable it if you want to shutdown and power off your PC, in fact I'd just disable it :-)

Thanks. I had the problem again the other night. I tried "Restart Windows" but it didn't solve the problem, which surprised me.

[jamsandwich]

Is it worth checking if there's an update for your network adapter? Have you tried WiFi vs ethernet?

I'm using a wireless usb adaptor. I tried updating the driver (via Device Manager) and it did a search and reported "The best drivers for your device are already installed".

I've ordered a Cat7 network cable. I plan to try that as an alternative to the wireless usb adaptor.

[gables]

I tried pinging google on the night it last happened. The response was in the hundreds (milliseconds?) whereas on the machine I'd been using for work it was about 10 or 11 ms (althought that might have been the next day). A day or two later I did a "Restart Windows" (soft reboot?). I've not had the problem since then, and pinging google returned responses within about 10 to 17ms. Maybe the soft reboot fixed it.

Might be related to the "fast boot" option as this affects the "shutdown" option which is not as you think when "fast boot" is enabled (default), basically it's a hibernate-like state where everything is written to disk to enable a faster reboot, a restart though is a much cleaner restart and hence possibly why this worked for you.

Google Windows 10 shutdown vs restart or Windows 10 fast boot and make your mind up.

Personally I'd disable it if you want to shutdown and power off your PC, in fact I'd just disable it :-)

[ladymuck]

Is it worth checking if there's an update for your network adapter? Have you tried WiFi vs ethernet?

[woody1]

I tried pinging google on the night it last happened. The response was in the hundreds (milliseconds?) whereas on the machine I'd been using for work it was about 10 or 11 ms (althought that might have been the next day). A day or two later I did a "Restart Windows" (soft reboot?). I've not had the problem since then, and pinging google returned responses within about 10 to 17ms. Maybe the soft reboot fixed it.

I'd check this if it happens again. Round-trip times in the hundreds of milliseconds will really degrade the browsing experience.

[jamsandwich]

I tend to ensure that my pc has the latest windows updates. I also regularly flush the dns cache and run CCleaner. I do most of my browsing in either Firefox (configured not to remember history) or Chrome incognito.

I hardly use any browser extentions. I think I've got one in Chrome and none in Firefox.

I shutdown Windows when I've finished using the machine. I think that is classed as "hard reboot" (when I power it on the next time). If "soft reboot" means "Restart Windows" then I do that occasionally but nowhere near as often as "Shut down".

I suppose it could maybe be a browser update. Then again probably not, because I think both Firefox and Chrome were going slow.

I tried unpluggin the modem (people seem to call them "router" but I thought that was simply a network switch?), waiting 20 seconds (actually probably more like 1 minute) but that didn't solve the problem.

I tried pinging google on the night it last happened. The response was in the hundreds (milliseconds?) whereas on the machine I'd been using for work it was about 10 or 11 ms (althought that might have been the next day). A day or two later I did a "Restart Windows" (soft reboot?). I've not had the problem since then, and pinging google returned responses within about 10 to 17ms. Maybe the soft reboot fixed it.

The problem has occurred intermittently over the past few months. If it happens again I think the first thing I'll try is "Restart Windows" (as opposed to "Shut down"). Thanks for the comments.

[ladymuck]

Still worth rebooting the router even if other devices surf ok. Might have a stale record if you use it for DHCP

May also be worth doing ipconfig /flushdns and ipconfig /renew (or renew6 if using IPv6).