My father-in-law has recently got a new PC with windows 10 and is having huge issues with internet speeds and connectivity. I’m a Linux user so wondered if any of the resident STW IT gurus can help?

He has a BT hub but couldn’t get the new PC to connect to any web pages (or at best they would load VERY slowly). I was over there a couple of weeks ago and had a quick look. His broadband connection was showing as VERY slow on all devices – contacted BT and they sent a new hub and did confirmed a fault on the line which they have apparently since fixed.

My wife is visiting them today and they still have huge problems opening any webpages etc. She reports a broadband speed test (on other devices as well as the PC) is showing a ping of around 30ms and download speed of 8mbps with upload at 1mbps but whatever browser they try webpages are not loading and timing out.

Any ideas? I’m thinking firewall/security settings or background updating, but on googling there do seem to be issues with Windows 10 and some hardware.

What advice can I give wife/F-i-L over the phone to try?

Take a laptop, see if it’s the same; that’ll tell you whether it’s the PC or the Internet connection.

Try a wired rather than wireless connection to isolate Wi-Fi issues.

Manually set the NIC’s DNS server to 8.8.8.8 to see if it’s a BT DNS issue.

Try a different browser.

Also log onto the router via a web browser and see what speed the router is seeing.

As above ^^^^^^

Plus a rough guess, I would suspect line fault still, is a guess in the absence of not being there in person to test. I’d normally try and use my own laptop plugged into the router to rule out the PC.

Main reasons used to be:

i) lots of upload flooding the bandwidth, if you use all your 1Mbps upload you will get nada on the download.

ii) really bad errors on the line so every bit of information is having to be reattempted until it downloads succesfully.

iii) Downloading too much – you said new PC. Probably not an issue after a few hours, but check Windows Update isn’t downloading.

Given most parents use of the internet I would guess the errors thing.
For a BT line if you can get some web access try here and follow the instructions – don’t be tempted to miss bits:

http://www.speedtest.btwholesale.com/

Oh yeah, and,

Plug the router into the master NTE5 telephone socket and remove any extensions (or better yet take the faceplate off and plug into the test socket behind if wifey isn’t screwdriverphobic).