Recently Restored PC, Networking Speed Severely Affected

Topic

New Reply

I recently restored a laptop, a custom SONY VPCF1390X, using the built-in recovery partition. Everything went about as well as I expected, but I noticed that download speeds were much lower than what I usually get. I’ve checked my network speed on the laptop and on other PCs I own and it seems to be the only one affected, what takes less than a minute to download on my desktop takes hours on this laptop, And there were no network problems before I restored it.

My first thought was to download the drivers, which is actually what I was trying to do when I noticed speed discrepancy. So I checked Sony’s page and my drivers were up-to-date. I downloaded and installed them anyway, in hopes that it may fix it, but it did nothing.

Since then I’ve changed ISPs and went from 5mbps (which was closer to 3mbps) to 40-41mbps. But still had the same awful performance, it didn’t even scale with the upgrade, stayed basically the same. It does seem to be sporadic, though very frequent, enough that the slow is the norm, with very small bursts of speed every once in a while.

I’ve even taken the computer to work and used the network there with no effect. My original idea was to restore this computer back to a fresh state so that I could use it in my job, but as a programmer, I often need to download large files and use the internet to research solutions, so I’m stuck with my previous laptop until I can fix this problem.

PS: Problem exists when connected either by cable or wireless.

Here is a post with the laptop’s specifications:

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/hYiFMnx60xwwxIYdwCnlRH1

Reply | Quote

Replies

You can find a newer driver here: http://www.marvell.com/support/downloads/driverSearchResults.do;jsessionid=1vzgTYTQjH8cp9dffpDQ17GQG5x9JS5KgYlYp2KMj9Dv7TnLg3wx!-1973991607#

but if it worked earlier with your existing driver, it probably won’t help.

Try a clean boot and see if the problem still exists.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

Jerry

Reply | Quote

The memory usage seemed a bit high at 36% – what else were you doing when you took that Speccy shot ?

While I didn’t notice any bloatware or a pre-installed trial AV running (have you dumped that lot ?), you could try a speed test either in Safe Mode with Networking or in a clean boot to see if there’s any improvement.

Do you need Bluetooth to be running ?

You could disable the MS Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter but I don’t think that’s likely to be slowing things up.

Reply | Quote

to jwitalka:

Yeah, I was running the Sony version of the driver in the old install. I might still give it a shot, maybe it’ll do something. I check out the clean boot advice see where that leads.

to Sudo15:

Seems I was running… 7-zip with the Speccy directory open, Firefox with about 7 tabs. It might be Alfresco running under tomcat and postgre, I had left it hibernating after working on a project. Other than Sony’s VAIO apps and the annoying webcam app, the laptop installs fairly cleanly. I had not planned on uninstalling them, and I also had them on my previous install. Safe Mode seems like good idea, so I’ll give that a shot.

Also Bluetooth is off, at least from the software switch, since it only has a hardware switch for wireless. I never got what the miniport thing does, but I’ll try disabling it, see where that gets me…

Ok, Update:

I tried a clean boot and using safe mode with networking… Still no difference. One note, I get 40mbps in speedtests on other PC in the same network, this one usually got around half. However I also tried downloading a file as a test (I used the full version of the eclipse x64 windows IDE, from their Brazil mirror about 200mb) I got an estimate of about a minute with 1-2mb/s on firefox. If I let download keep going it would progressively get slower and slower.

Reply | Quote

Do you still get the same slow speeds when using IE and after running Disk Cleanup as an administrator or some other program such as the free version of CCleaner or TFC to clear the cache ?

As it’s slowing down as time goes on during a download, it sounds as if something is building up.

If either of those programs find a substantial amount, then it would be worth following up with a Defrag.

This is what the Miniport Adapter is for http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/what-is-microsoft-virtual-wifi-miniport-adapter/

I disabled mine ages ago and even after a couple of factory resets, I’ve never seen it since but the first netsh wlan command in that article will enable it if you ever want to utilize it after disabling it – it can sometimes cause WiFi problems and is usually advised to disable it.

Reply | Quote

I did a speedtest after running CCleaner and Defraggler (ran it till there was 0% fragmentation). Seems the speedtest results have ‘improved’, but browsing is still slow and I also attempted a test download again, and was only able to go 2.0mb/s at most, and speed deteriorated after some time. I tried it in IE as well, speeds were markedly slower, though speedtest provided a similar result. Here is the speedtest for reference:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3460347964

Reply | Quote

Have you tried that test download on the other machines to see if you get similar or better results ?

Did CCleaner find much to clean ?

Depending upon what I’ve been doing, I’ve sometimes found that after running CCleaner there were a substantial number of files still remaining when I’ve gone Start – typed %temp% then pressed Enter on Temp.

These can be system files which have required a UAC to delete, so it may be worth checking in there.

Reply | Quote

Tried that, Temp was pretty empty. Also tried installing the newer drivers, disabling Wireless Connection 2 and messing with the LAN adapter advanced configuration options. Nothing.

I did download the test file on my desktop as a control, downloads in 30s at 4.9mb/s rock steady. I am using wireless on this laptop, but like I said before, I tried the cable and it wasn’t any better.

Reply | Quote

What was the reason for the factory reset and do you have a system image from prior to the reset ?

If the reset was necessary and you don’t have a prior image and as you seemed to have tried everything anyone can think of – my only other suggestion is to redo the factory reset – correctly uninstall any pre-installed trial AV – unless you want to use that and dump any bloatware.

You also want to get rid of Java v6 as that is well out of date and you can use Java’s uninstall older versions as well as updating at http://www.java.com

Java seems to be reasonably safe at the moment but as a safeguard after the update, in All Control Panel Items right click on Java – select Open and under the Security tab uncheck the box to allow in browsers.

While I haven’t checked, you’ll probably also need to update Addobe products.

According to Speccy the Bluetooth service is Running – also from Speccy, your VM looks healthy so I don’t think that it’s a memory problem but you could try it with each of the sticks removed as a quick test.

Did the speed problem occur after the Windows Updates or did they seem slow in downloading as well ?

They took about 7hrs including installation with a throughput of ~6 meg on mine after a recent factory reset.

Reply | Quote

Reason for the reset was basically wanting a clean start. I was previously using this computer for years without a clean install and it was feeling quite sluggish and had a few hanging problems that I couldn’t fix. I wanted to use this computer for work (mainly programming) since I had recently built a desktop and I wanted to compartmentalize a little better. Programming and work on this one, Entertainment on desktop and a spare (currently the one I use for work).

Regardless I don’t have an image, so I would have to reset again.

And Actually I did manage to get through all the Windows Updates, Adobe Updates and Sony Updates (Or at least most of the Sony ones). I was already aware of the problem, but I powered through it retrying as many times as was needed. I was kind of hoping at least one would fix this issue, I guess.

Resetting again wouldn’t be so bad, other than installing Office again (not hard, especially now that I have a faster connection, but I’m worried that the key won’t register this time due to being activated once already). I haven’t installed much else, Firefox, Python 2.7, Python 3, Maven, Pycharms, SourceTree, Git, Github off the top of my head.

One last thing I wanted to try though… It’s been a while since I’ve dabbled in Linux, but I was thinking that maybe if I could find a suitable distro, maybe I could boot from an USB and test the connectivity and speed from Linux. If it works I pretty much confirmed it was a bad install, if it doesn’t it all points back to hardware (though it was fine before the reset…) or Linux drivers also sucking…

Reply | Quote

I think Linux Mint seems to be a popular one but other members may have better suggestions, although another reset may be quicker or just a waste of time http://www.linuxmint.com/

I think you should be okay with Office as it’s being reinstalled onto the same motherboard which it takes the fingerprint of, but you can contact MS on that if you have any problems with the product key.

Reply | Quote