New Windows 10 PC, only have access to DialUP internet.

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I have family in northern Michigan which decided to take the plunge as Win7 is approaching end of life and bought a brand new Dell XPS.  The retailer transferred all files from the Windows 7 machine and did all the updates and intalled a US Robotics 56k modem  as they do not have DSL or any high speed internet in their area even cell phones don’t always work there.   All went very well.  After the 45 mile drive back home they plugged the new Dell and did the Dialup thing and connection was good all went well until they tried to do some browsing.   Windows was using all the bandwidth and it took almost 30 minutes to load the home page on Firefox, it kept timing out.  I suggested that they disable Cortana, news, weather and all the other massive and uneccessary applications in Settings/Privacy, but it did not help at all.   With Windows 7 they never had any problems with browsing or hogging all the bandwidth.     Windows 10 has been an unexpected disappointment for them and I have no idea what else to suggest.     In the end, they disconnected the new Dell and reconnected the Windows 7 desktop and everything was back to normal, browsing is normal and Windows Update works great without any problems.  I am not sure if this was a good idea, but I suggested that they buy a third party antivirus suite and enable it in December to get some protection for at least a year.  After that they won’t have any choice but to forget about the internet with dialup.  I feel a little responsible for this issue since I convinced them that they could make Win10 reasonably similar to Win7.

My question is, what can be done for the many thousands of people in rural communities who will be forced to abandon Win7 and upgrade to Windows 10 but only have access to a dialup connection?  I never encountered a discussion about that issue before and January is just around the corner.   Everyone on this forum already knows when looking at the resource monitor, Win10 never stops sending and receiving gobs of Mbs.  It looks like some of the processes are being used by Microsoft for some other purpose.  We already know how secretive MS is about what their apps really do.   Anyway, the real problem here is that Microsoft never told anyone, that you must have a High Speed connection to use Windows 10.  Did they assume that everyone had High Speed?   Any thoughts out there??

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cesmart4125, TaskForce141

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The amount of Svhost connections hogging bandwidth in W10 is ridiculous let alone underhanded telemetry wise, which is the main reason I don’t use it.
Whilst I sympathise with your family’s predicament, my initial thought was a dial-up connection should have been a ‘first’ consideration prior to moving to W10 from win7. There is a way around this which is by dual booting with Linux and using linux as the internet facing OS, then transfer stuff between the two. I wouldn’t go down the VM route as they already have W10 installed.
This will ease the bandwidth considerably against W10.
The other main issue they will encounter is the size of the Cumulative updates for W10 which is, well, over-the-top in size as well as slow..ouch!
IMHO Linux dual boot seems logical in this instance.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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TaskForce141

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Have you tried setting it as a metered connection? Might help some.

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[Alex5723]

anonymous wrote:

Any thoughts out there??

If they are concerned about Win 7 EOL, I would switch them fully to linux Mint (no Windows OS no dual boot).
Downloading Windows 10 feature updates will take a week 🙁

They can stay on Win 7 for at least the coming 3 years / until the PC breaks / browsers stop supporting Win 7.
Just install a good A/V software : Bitdefender, Kaspersky A/V, an ad blocker: uBlock Origin, and intrusion preventing software : HitManPro Alert.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Alex5723.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Alex5723.

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Yes they set it as metered connection and most apps in privacy were turned off.  Dial up connection is consistenly connecting at  52K which is very good for dialup.  I confirmed that in Resource Monitor  the first on the list under NETWORK was Svhost sending about 2,100 k, then it was dasHost.exe. sending about 1800k then a bunch of other unknown apps sending and receiving.  Not sure why dashost is running, there are no wireless devices to pair and wifi adapter is disabled.  I told them to forget trying to run Win10 on dialup, there is NO HOPE.  They will just have to use Win7 as long as they can then forget about going online.

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Have you tried to disable services they do not need right now?

Perhaps that WPD app could control some of that phone home behavior as Windows 10 was created to service Microsoft’s wants. Looks like nearly everything has “telemetry” built-in and even some kinds of static advertisements where they have should have no place.

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Most webpages these days are just too loaded w/ mostly junk. Images take up a lot of band width, turn off loading images. Maybe a good ad blocker could pare back the bytes need to load a page. But maybe Internet via Satellite is the way to go?

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I’d have to agree with going with dish internet such as Hughes. Forget about dial-up it would be nothing but aggravation every time they used the pc. We had an office in an industrial area with no high speed internet for many years and we had them on Hughes satellite. It worked ok for them and is much better than dialup. Speeds are also getting better. Only thing I recommend is if they sign up, save all the paperwork and documentation if you ever need to disconnect their service. They tried giving us the runaround when we terminated service but we had all the original info so they couldn’t play dumb with us.

If I only had dialup and no access to high speed internet then I would definitely use a satellite service.

Red Ruffnsore

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I’m out in the “Sticks” also and quite a number of years ago I used WildBlue satellite when there was no other options other than dialup. Hopefully satellite has improved since then and no matter which satellite co. you go with be careful of data caps and paperwork.

Eventually a startup wireless co. decided to cover this area and I have been with them ever since. My suggestion would be to check around for a wireless ISP before going to satellite but if there are none then satellite would be your best option.

Good luck 🙂

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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anonymous OP should make a permanent switch to satellite internet as soon as possible

dial-up internet is so late 20th century and Windows 10 has very limited support for dial-up modems (few drivers for them) & dial-up internet connections

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also dialup connections should have gone the way of those 3.5 inch floppy disks which those are not used in modern PCs.
it’s now inexcusable for internet providers in rural & sub-urban areas to not provide faster internet connections and only providing super slow dialup connections.

check this web site to see if internet providers in rural areas provide faster connections:
https://www.highspeedinternet.com/providers/rural

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EP wrote:

check this web site to see if internet providers in rural areas provide faster connections: https://www.highspeedinternet.com/providers/rural

The only problem with that site is that it is not granular enough for the outlying areas if I am using it correctly.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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I didn’t switch from Dialup until 2 years ago … cable tv included the internet in our package. plus the modem included wifi that I use for my cellphone.

But, back then it took 3 hours to update a program with a 19MB update .. it was terrible.   Windows created those huge cumulative updates … made it ridiculous to use dial-up.     But you couldn’t beat the price plus most of the time I used my cellphone to surf the internet.

 

At&T has something called fixed wireless now for rural areas.. kind of like Satellite.. if they do live near a cellphone tower.

 

But Satellite is probably your best bet.  They may get broadband speeds.

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