Five bars of wifi signal...but very slow internet

[Bachgen31]

Hi guys,

 

So for some time now my laptop has been struggling to get any kind of good page loading speed. A lot of the time, the page goes into 'not responding' for about 5-10 seconds, then finally works. It can take up to about 10 seconds for me to load a page sometimes. Thing is, I look on my signal strength and I see 5 bars, excellent signal. I also live in a flat just by myself, with the router sitting right next to me and it still happens. What happens often is that it will say 'limited' on the wifi section on the bottom right, so I often have the disconnect and reconnect, only for it to happen again not long after,

Even as i'm writing this the page is lagging and I have to wait a few seconds for the screen to unfreeze. I'm starting to think that it 's my laptop, and maybe it's just not very good at picking up wifi, because my girlfriend's is a lot better than mine at picking up good wifi (despite both our laptops being the same age).

Could anyone advise? I've tried updating the drivers, closing any background programs, etc, but to no avail,

Thank you!

 

[timster]

WiFi signal strength has very little to do with the internet speed.

 

reboot both the modem and router. If the speed is still garbage, call your internet provider.

[Bachgen31]

True, but this is the case for anywhere I go: my parents' house, my flat, my girlfriend's flat, so it can't be the routers. I've rebooted my router many times but that does nothing

[xendrome]

41 minutes ago, Bachgen31 said:

my girlfriend's flat

whoa buddy, don't you think it's a bit too early in the thread to start insulting your girl?

[+Warwagon MVC]

Kind of sounds like bad sectors, on your hard drive.

 

Download and run this (Standard Portable (zip)

 

http://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfo

 

This will check your smart data of your drive.

[+BudMan MVC]

Prob infected with something to be honest.. Routing all your traffic through something because of the infection..  Or are you running some sort of vpn client?

[xendrome]

5 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Kind of sounds like bad sectors, on your hard drive.

This sounds nothing like bad sectors on a hard drive.... wut....

 

Open an elevated command prompt and run these commands first.

 

netsh int tcp reset

netsh int ip reset

netsh winsock reset

 

Then report back

[+Warwagon MVC]

6 minutes ago, xendrome said:

This sounds nothing like bad sectors on a hard drive.... wut....

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

Let me to it to you this way, when I connect to a customer machine to fix an issue, one of the first things i do is check the smart data of their hard drive, because if it's bad sector you'll just be chasing your tail. Yesterday I got a call because someone's Quickbooks wouldn't open, but it did the day before. She could open her Quickbooks company file but then it would just crash but everything else on the laptop worked just fine. Then I checked the smart data on the drive

 

2 flags had been Tripped

 

Sector Relocation Count (Relocating a lot more sectors than it should)

Current Pending Sector. (This one means the drive knows of some current bad sectors in play)

 

So I can a scanned the drive repairing  8 bad sectors, cloned to a new drive, told QuickBooks to repair itself. Quickbooks then opened without issue. Now I'm just waiting for a new drive for her

[Bachgen31]

48 minutes ago, xendrome said:

whoa buddy, don't you think it's a bit too early in the thread to start insulting your girl?

This right here xD Well done sir 

Thank you all for your advice. I'll report back if there's no change

[Bachgen31]

49 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Kind of sounds like bad sectors, on your hard drive.

 

Download and run this (Standard Portable (zip)

 

http://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfo

 

This will check your smart data of your drive.

Thanks, just downloaded it now. What do I do once it's on the bit where it says 'Health Status' 'temperature', etc?

Sorry, this kind of stuff is quite new to me so apologies if I sound a little ignorant 

[Bachgen31]

1 hour ago, BudMan said:

Prob infected with something to be honest.. Routing all your traffic through something because of the infection..  Or are you running some sort of vpn client?

Nah not using a VPN. What kind of infection could do this kind of thing then? Is it something my AVG could fix?

[+Warwagon MVC]

1 hour ago, Bachgen31 said:

Thanks, just downloaded it now. What do I do once it's on the bit where it says 'Health Status' 'temperature', etc?

Sorry, this kind of stuff is quite new to me so apologies if I sound a little ignorant 

 

 

 

 

 What does the status say in the top left?

[Bachgen31]

33 minutes ago, warwagon said:

 What does the status say in the top left?

It says 'Caution' under Health Status, and Temperature as 36*C

[+Warwagon MVC]

10 minutes ago, Bachgen31 said:

It says 'Caution' under Health Status, and Temperature as 36*C

 

 

Scroll down the list and see what attributes are highlighted.

[Bachgen31]

1 minute ago, warwagon said:

Scroll down the list and see what attributes are highlighted.

There are quite a few of them there in blue, but there's one in yellow/gold, which is Reallocated Sectors Count

[+Warwagon MVC]

3 minutes ago, Bachgen31 said:

There are quite a few of them there in blue, but there's one in yellow/gold, which is Reallocated Sectors Count

 

if you scroll down further, is the current pending sector yellow too?

[Bachgen31]

16 minutes ago, warwagon said:

if you scroll down further, is the current pending sector yellow too?

Nah Current Pending Sector Count is blue

[+Warwagon MVC]

Ok, but that's assuming that bad sector(s) didn't trip that attribute, the other sector relocation attribute means it's been relocating more than it should so I could classify that drive as sick.

[Bachgen31]

7 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Ok, but that's assuming that bad sector(s) didn't trip that attribute, the other sector relocation attribute means it's been relocating more than it should so I could classify that drive as sick.

Ah damn. Anyway round this?

[Bachgen31]

Thank you, btw, for taking the time to guide me through this, much appreciated

[+Warwagon MVC]

20 minutes ago, Bachgen31 said:

Ah damn. Anyway round this?

 

Personally, if any of my drives had the sector relocation attribute in yellow I would replace the drive.

[+BudMan MVC]

What is the number of Reallocated Sectors Count??

 

And is it going up??

 

As to what could cause issues with having to refresh pages - some sort of virus eating up your bandwidth sending out crap looking for other boxes to infect, sending spam..  Something sending you through a proxy to pop up ads, something that changed your dns to something else to send you places that are not really where you want to go..

 

Pretty much any sort of malware currently could be cause issues with your internet connection..  Does the problem go away if you use a wire vs wireless?  Plug your laptop in with a wire - does it work great then?

[SnailSlug]

You may have a driver problem. Update your wireless drivers, then check if the problem still exists.

 

It's entirely possibly that your laptop has specifically crappy wireless. What make/model is it?

[Bachgen31]

On 3/6/2017 at 11:22 PM, SnailSlug said:

You may have a driver problem. Update your wireless drivers, then check if the problem still exists.

 

It's entirely possibly that your laptop has specifically crappy wireless. What make/model is it?

Yeah I think that might be the case, it's about 2 years old this laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite