Computer burnt out?

Final Fantasy Online Forums > Community Discussion > The Dork Squad

05.19.2012 2:11am

Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

Well, I take back what I said about this site not being one of the sites that is acting half-assed for me. I typed up this thread, and it crapped out on me when I tried to post it. So here we go again, with the caveat that this site is not as immune to my problem as I thought. And I should mention now that I've finally got this thing posted, that it crapped out about four more times before I finally managed to post this thread.

Simply put, my internet is acting wonky, and I can't even begin to explain why. Certain sites will either load very slowly and then load half-assed with only text and a few images or they will not load at all, giving me the basic "can't connect to the internet" error, which tells me absolutely nothing. Many sites are fine, and load normally. This site *was* one of them, and it still loads fine. But as you can see, it crapped out when I tried to actually post this thread. Other major sites that are giving me headaches are gameFAQ's and MSN, which I use for all my email.

This problem is unbearable, but when I use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer it seems to work fine for all sites. I would just suck it up and use Firefox for everything, but the real issue I'm posting this thread about is happening in both IE8 and Firefox. I can't upload anything. I can download stuff just fine, even from the same client that I upload things, but no matter what I do, whenever I try to upload, it starts the upload and then immediately hangs at like 5% forever, every time. If I cancel out of the upload and try to upload again, it's like I'm hitting the buttons and the computer's ignoring me. Nothing happens no matter what I try to do within the download/upload interface.

Now, I have been scanning and processing copious amounts of stuff recently, and that tends to bog down my system and create similar effects as I'm seeing now. This is the way it's been for every computer I've owned, for years and years. I just assume it's because I'm using laptops, which just plain aren't as powerful as regular PC's when it comes to memory. But usually all I need to do is close out of painshop pro, or in the worst cases, restart my computer, and everything moves like normal.

Not this time, though. I've tried doing everything imaginable for about a week now, and no matter what, my internet is still acting like shit. My computer itself is running fine. I'm pretty confident this isn't a virus issue, and it isn't an internet connectivity issue. There's something going on here, and I don't have even the slightest clue what it is. Have I pushed my computer too hard, and now it's reached some sort of point of no return where it just can't do certain things anymore?

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05.19.2012 2:17am

Zubis
Registered Member

How are you sure it's not an internet connectivity issue?

Because that's what it's screaming to me.

What type of internet connection do you have? DSL?

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05.19.2012 3:25am

Thread Creator (Edited on 05.19.2012 at 3:55am)

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

I have DSL, yes.

I don't think it's the internet connection because everything else works fine. If it was a connectivity issue, then I would be seeing the problems across the board, on all sites. I can download stuff just fine, it's only uploading that starts and then sits there and does nothing(and it does actually upload the 5-10% it says, just nothing further than that. See?).

And it's only select parts of select sites that act half-assed and either load slowly, halfway, or not at all. And it's not an image-intensive thing either, which is what I though it could be at first. Sites that are all images, like danbooru or the ff wiki work fine. Google and Google Images works fine. I'd say 80% of the sites I visit, and some of them are heavy sites with lots of images, codes, scripts, and whatnot, all work perfectly. It's just specific, seemingly random sites or parts of sites that just. will. not. work. And the problem is a few of these random sites are sites I visit constantly, like gameFAQ's and my MSN email account. And I absolutely need to be able to upload stuff again. I didn't waste a thousand bucks on a new scanner to have the images just sit on my computer!

I've noticed it seems like it might be a Java thing, though. Many of the things that aren't loading, and seem to be preventing other parts of the sites from loading, are those big stupid ad banners (although even this is hit or miss - the ones for FFS work fine, which is probably why FFS itself works fine, for the most part). The error box at the bottom corner of the screen says the ad script isn't defined, and java is also used to run the uploading clients I use, and I think it's used along with php for things like posting new threads. I've tried reinstalling Java, but that didn't change anything. I did have a runtime error log text file pop up on my desktop out of nowhere a while ago, around the same time I started really seeing problems with my internet. I figured reinstalling Java from their site would fix whatever problems I might have had with Java...but...no.

Here's an idea. Is it possible I've reached my upload limit for the month? I have no idea if my internet provider has an upload limit, but I just tried uploading something on the home computer, and I ran into the same problem. The only possible test I have left is to have someone here try and upload something and see if it works for them. I know Lex and Supersquall had access to a section of my webspace for the Coliseum project.

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05.19.2012 6:17am

Amer
pew pew pew

Just gonna leave this here:

http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools

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05.19.2012 7:49am

Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

Those are pretty handy. Unfortunately, they didn't really tell me whether there's something wrong or not, or what it might be. Here are my results(or mostly non-results) from the various tests, if they mean anything to you:

NDT: 0.0020 MB/s upload speed, 18MB/s download speed. That seems awful slow for my upload speed, and ridiculously too fast for my download speed. My usualy MB/s download rate usually hovers around 1Mb, not 18! Are these normal results?

Glasnost: I tried it twice, and it was never able to complete the diagnostic. Don't know if is because of the tool or because of my computer.

NPAD: I got results from this, I think, but they're total gobbledygook. I couldn't find anything in there that made any sense at all.

Pathload2: Same thing as Glasnost. I run the .exe file, and click "Start new measurement", but all I get is a Windows error report and it shuts down.

ShaperProbe: I tried running it, and got stuck on two bars of "estimating capacity" for about ten minutes before I finally closed out of it.

Windrider: This seems to be for mobile devices, so I didn't bother with it.

BISmark: This one didn't make much sense to me, and sounds like it's a long-term monitoring program.

Neubot: Like BISmark, this one sounds like it's a long-term monitoring program.

Basically, none of these really gave me any useful info, and most of them just plain didn't work. Is them not working indicative of a problem, or are they just obsolete?

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05.19.2012 8:03am

Zubis
Registered Member

Your DSL upload speed is as I expected, very poor, it explains why your internet dies whenever you're uploading anything.

DSL upload is shared with download - if you've been constantly uploading files recently then it would completely kill your download at the same time.

Run these to double check?

https://www.speedtest.net/

https://www.pingtest.net/

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05.19.2012 9:03am

Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

The speedtest one gives me a download rate of about 22 MB/s, and it disconnects whenever it tries to do the upload speed, heh.

The pingtest never gets off the ground and freezes halfway through the "measuring packet loss" part.

I have been uploading a decent amount of stuff this month, although nothing's been uploaded in about a week. Everything you see in the "Art of Final Fantasy IX Scans" thread here is stuff I scanned and uploaded in the past month. It's a few hundred images, and probably totals about 500MB, almost all of which(423MB) were the .bmp image files I uploaded for the scans from Dawn. After that I decided to upload only jpegs since they're so much smaller. The amount of stuff I download in a given month is usually more than 500MB, though. I actually looked at our internet bill to see if they mention anything about data limits or whatnot, and I didn't see anything there. So is it likely at this point that I reached the upload limit for the month? I can still download stuff, since I just downloaded a 150MB file the other day without problems.

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05.19.2012 9:11am

Zubis
Registered Member

Contact your ISP and check your router settings, it's definitely your internet connection.

It's possible you hit your limit, but if this has been going on for months/years it's probably something else. A friend of mine's internet connection got progressively worse over a year and after spending two months investigating it her ISP found that some copper wiring near her house had begun to corrode.

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05.19.2012 1:04pm

Lexx
I know how they work

^ The same thing happened to me a while back. Internet connection kept getting worse and worse. At first we thought it was the computer, then we thought it was the modem. Finally, after contacting our provider, it turned out the actual wire undergound in our front yard had been damaged somehow. Once that was replaced everything was perfect again.

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05.19.2012 8:29pm

Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

Problem solved. It was the modem/router. I just rebooted them and reconnected the cables and everything is working fine now. My god, what an idiot I am. I should have done that from the very beginning. What a great IT person I'll be once I go back to school! Bleh. :/

Thanks for the advice, though. And thanks for not telling me I'm a retard, which I'm sure you all wanted to, heh.

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05.19.2012 10:23pm

amaron
No answer, must be that deaf bitch.

Free Spirit said:

Problem solved. It was the modem/router. I just rebooted them and reconnected the cables and everything is working fine now. My god, what an idiot I am. I should have done that from the very beginning. What a great IT person I'll be once I go back to school! Bleh. :/

Thanks for the advice, though. And thanks for not telling me I'm a retard, which I'm sure you all wanted to, heh.

IT is more about babysitting than actual work, at least in my experience.

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05.20.2012 8:59am

Zubis
Registered Member

IT people get a lot of flack for opening calls/emails with the "Have you tried rebooting?" line, but the simple honest truth is that rebooting stuff takes cares of at least 50% of problems.

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