[oldshakey]

Verizon says that their test show that they are downloading to me at a speed of >1,000 MB whereas their speed checker (on my PC) says I am receiving at the rate of only 420-470 MB. They say that there is nothing wrong with their telephone lines and that my PC must have a large file or something that is taking up too much of my memory and that I will have to delete this file or shutdown the program to get the full speed. I get this slower speed even when IE-6 is the only major program I have running (with anti-virus turned off). Their comment about too little memory seems plausible because my machine takes a long time (1-2 minutes) to return to normal after my PC-cillin anti-virus software updates.

Does this sound reasonable? If so, how can I solve this problem? If not, is there another place I can find and correct this problem so that I can get the higher speed?

I have an ~6 year old IBM PC with 256MB memory and an Athlon 500 processor and Windows 98 SE. I'm not an expert and therefore will appreciate a little hand holding.

Thanks very much,
John

 

[Triple6]

Make sure you are comparing the right numbers. Most ISP's advertise speeds in kilobits or megabytes but most browsers and download managers report the speed in kilobytes or megabytes. The difference is that there are 8 bits in 1 byte so the numbers will never match up.

Further, the speed will depend on the source you are downloading from.

And Windows 98 wasn't optimized for fast internet connections. There are programs out there that can optimize Windows 98 for DSL connections. SG Speed Optimizer is one of them: http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php You can load the Optimal settings and see if there's any change - it actually works on Windows 98 and ME, not so much for Windows 2000 and XP.

There could be something on your computer thats sending or receiving data that could be slowing down the download speed, like a virus or spyware. You're PC-Cillin program may not be looking for spyware.

 

[oldshakey]

Make sure you are comparing the right numbers. Most ISP's advertise speeds in kilobits or megabytes but most browsers and download managers report the speed in kilobytes or megabytes. The difference is that there are 8 bits in 1 byte so the numbers will never match up.

Further, the speed will depend on the source you are downloading from.

And Windows 98 wasn't optimized for fast internet connections. There are programs out there that can optimize Windows 98 for DSL connections. SG Speed Optimizer is one of them: http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php You can load the Optimal settings and see if there's any change - it actually works on Windows 98 and ME, not so much for Windows 2000 and XP.

There could be something on your computer thats sending or receiving data that could be slowing down the download speed, like a virus or spyware. You're PC-Cillin program may not be looking for spyware.

Thanks. My speed checker shows 428 kilobits or 53.5 kilobytes. I'm also using AdAware SE. Should I also be using something like SpyBot? Recent PC-cillin "complete" scans indicate no viruses. Will try your recommended "Speedguide," but something is definitely slowing my PC considerably (it takes a lot of time to select the website listed in your email answer and have IE show it up). Any other suggestions?

Thanks again,
John

 

[JohnWill]

Try www.dslreports.com and www.speakeasy.net and run their speed tests. Post your results here. When you do the tests, do them to a datacenter as close as possible to your location.

 

[Triple6]

Well you have an older computer and obsolete computer, it wouldn't take much to slow down its performance. PC-Cillin could be the issue if you notice it runs slow.

 

[oldshakey]

Thanks for your help. Sorry that I'm so late in getting back to you. I downloaded and ran SG TCP Optimizer and applied the recommended changes. Downloads seem a little faster, however, Verizon's connection speed tester still shows ~444-472 Kbits speed.

Something seems to be tieing up my memory. Often if I have Internet Explorer or other large program open with my anti virus program (PC-Cillin) temporarily shutdown and then try to restart PC-Cillin, my whole PC bogs down and sometimes takes minutes for it to start up. During this time, I can hear my hard drive actually stop reading data. Sometimes the system never gets the program (PC-Cillin) running and I have to restart the computer. The same thing happens when I try to run Ad-Aware. This didn't happen until ~6 months ago. Could this be part of my download speed problem? Is there some way to find out what is causing the "memory" problem and fixing it?

I have Win 98 SE and 256MB of memory installed. My Computer tells me that 244MB are actually recognized. Processor is an Athllon 500. The PC is ~7 years old and I'm trying to hang on and buy a new Vista machine.

Thanks much for any help you can give me.

 

[Triple6]

If you remove PC-Cillin does the computer run any better?

 

[oldshakey]

Thanks again for your help. Turning off PC-Cillin does help. I have not tried to uninstall it, however.

After responding to you yesterday, I downloaded and ran the freeware Registry Booster from C-net's site. It found 3 problems and I "fixed" them using their automatic fix. I did not defrag the registry as recommended by Registry Booster as they wanted money for the software. I then rechecked my DSL download speed and it was now up to 1,000+Kbits/second (Verizon's advertised speed for the service that I'm paying for. For now, at least my DSL speed problem has been solved.

I am not familiar with my PC's registry. Does it really need defragging? It may be that I should periodically run Registry Booster but due to lack of knowledge on registries, I don't know don't know what I'm doing. Is working with my registry something I should be doing with my level of knowledge?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Triple6]

Usually the registry is best left alone, contrary to what many programs will say - usually they also want money to fix the registry. There are only a few decent registry programs but they all should be used with extreme care.