Any ideas why sometimes my PC works flawlessly and other times it is pants, mainly connecting to the internet being a problem. generally if I log on later at night it is fine but during the day or early evening it is a pain, am with Sky using a netgear router hard wired in to a dell dimension pc that is about 5 years old.

How can I test my connection?
What could be causing the intermittent issues?
should I get a new pc, will it fix everything?

My wife is trying to book my 40th and has been for several weeks but cannot ever get online, things must be so bad as she has just called the pc a c**ting machine, never heard her use that word before 😯

have you rebooted the router?

Router rebooted about 10 times

You say it’s mainly internet connection issues. Is it just internet access or does it misbehave doing other things as well?

If it’s playing up doing everything it sounds like it’s your PC which could be a whole wealth of things. The first thing i’d check in that instance though is that you don’t have any malware on there. I’d get windows defender from microsoft (it’s free) and get it running. Also check your cpu/memory usage when it’s playing up, press control-Alt-Delete once, click task manager and then the performance tab, what does that say?

Have most problems with connecting to internet, generally ok doing pc based tasks, photos, media files etc

have spyware and antivirus running in the background

have checked cpu usage and when it is playing up, cpu is normally 90+% usage, checked on processes tab and system and system idle process are 50-50 split on cpu usage

Last night took me about 2hrs to get on to the internet and download defender, ran it and no issues. Carried out the diagnostics on the router and the connection etc were fine, just unable to open many web pages, some like hotmail and google can be opened albeit very slowly. decided to back up some of the latest photos on there and I got the windows blue screen of death 3 times whilst recording the data to dvd, finally got the disc burned and lo and behold tried to connect to the internet, was about 11pm, and click, click every page I tried opened quickly.

have noticed that the hard drive makes some peculiar noises during start up recently, as if the bearings are fubar’d but also think that there is an issue with sky, my ISP.

Piece of mind says buy a new pc as I think mine may be on the way out but also have a nagging concern that something is not quite right with the service i receive from the ISP, why no go during the day and early evening but almost flawless from around 10pm, anyone else have similar with sky?

Try running some speed tests over a few days at different times
http://www.speedtest.net/

Also it’s a good idea to make sure you have backups of all important files – especially given the noises

is it a USB modem or a proper ethernet router? I think the next step would be to see if you can get another computer on your connection, see how that behaves. If it’s fine then you could be right on the new PC front, assuming you’re not prepared to troubleshoot your existing all the way (and sometimes it can just be a waste of time anyway). Got a laptop or does a friend have one? itouch, something like that?

download spybot for free and run that,m it could be some dodgy malware going mental when your on the net.

what operating system is it, if XP you can re-install but still leave all your programs, much cheaper than buying a new one.

im with sky aswell and its been fine, maybe call them and get them to test the line as back-up.

also as above try and connect another PC/laptop

Blue screens + strange hard disk noises make me think that the internet problems are just a symptom of another issue.

As a start, I’d back everything up, then run a scandisk with all the options ticked. Also download the Seagate and Western Digital drive diagnosis software and run the long tests that they offer.

You can also download the memtest86 live cd, and leave that running for a few hours. I’m not saying that your problems sound RAM related, but it is a good way to excercise the CPU, mobo, memory, psu etc without using the hard disk (and thus can help rule it out as a possible cause of your problems).

If you are getting strange noises from your HD, back it all up ASAP.

It is likely that the HD will just pack up and you will lose everything.

data backed up

have run connection and speed tests and results are acceptable at 5meg download speed on an 8meg connection at 8:30pm, however still unable to open web pages, have IE7, firefox and google chrome, non of which made any difference.

Finally managed to access web using IE7 so tried to download IE8, downloaded at 860KB/s and installed. Had blue screen of death (page error in unpaged area or something like that) when the pc restarted to complete installation. This happened a couple of times before the pc started ok, lo and behold using IE8 no problems with accessing web pages, didn’t try any other browser (was online so not willing to risk it). Was this a factor or coincidence that it was now 10pm and things generally seem better after this time anyway.

Could there be a setting on the pc that might prevent access at certain times of the day (checking the router settings there is the ability to block the router with my firewall at certain times but the access at all times box is the one that is checked)?

router is an ethernet one, hard wired to pc with wireless enabled to allow xbox and wii connection. as there is no option of connecting another pc to my router could I connect my xbox 360 via an ethernet cable and access the web using that to try and eliminate ISP issues? Xbox live uses your windows live log in

back up
format/replace disc
rebuild

with the amount of crap that windows collects its worth doing a periodic rebuild download all the cd/mem stick on 1 disc before you start and keep for next time

Had blue screen of death (page error in unpaged area or something like that)

Open Computer Management ( right-click on My Computer -> Manage -> Event Viewer -> System, and look for errors and warnings – I would imagine that you have a bunch from source “disk”. If so, your hard drive needs replacing. It won’t cure the problem with internet access, but it’s the most important issue to get sorted.

data backed up

have run connection and speed tests and results are acceptable at 5meg download speed on an 8meg connection at 8:30pm, however still unable to open web pages, have IE7, firefox and google chrome, non of which made any difference.

Finally managed to access web using IE7 so tried to download IE8, downloaded at 860KB/s and installed. Had blue screen of death (page error in unpaged area or something like that) when the pc restarted to complete installation. This happened a couple of times before the pc started ok, lo and behold using IE8 no problems with accessing web pages, didn’t try any other browser (was online so not willing to risk it). Was this a factor or coincidence that it was now 10pm and things generally seem better after this time anyway.

Could there be a setting on the pc that might prevent access at certain times of the day (checking the router settings there is the ability to block the router with my firewall at certain times but the access at all times box is the one that is checked)?

I don’t understand why you persist in thinking this is an internet problem? Clearly there is something wrong with the PC.

Did it go through the tests I posted previously with no problems?

Another thing I have just thought of are the fans in the case, over the CPU and in the PSU. A failing/dead one will make crunchy bearing noises and overheating will cause random problems like you’re seeing.

retro83 – not able to run all the tests, ran scandisk ok but with my lack of internet access not been able to download the ones you suggested. I do believe it to be a PC issue, my continued internet questions are due to the fact that I can guarentee that if I try to connect to the internet between 9am and 9pm I can’t, then as if by magic from 10pm onwards I have no issues.

Not sure about the position of the fans but whilst the pc is running I can hear fans running, will open it up tonight and switch on, see if it/they all work.

thanks for your help

and you could completely eliminate the internet by wiring the xbox in and sticking a disk in. even without a live login it will still go and find updates and try to download them. if it does then you’ll get a progress meter with amount downloaded for a nice bandwidth comparison.

How are you using the PC – is it mostly switched off?
Do you have automatic updates switched on for most software (e.g. Windows, Anti-virus etc…)?

Have you tried switching it on and leaving it connected for an hour or two before trying to use the internet?

One possible issue could be the automatic updates are using all the processer power / internet bandwidth, which would account for the intermittent problem.