Poor Internet connection

[lti]

I am having a strange issue with two computers on a network. The network has up to four computers connected to it, but only these two have any issues. One of these computers runs Windows 7 Home Premium and the other computer runs Windows XP Home. On these two computers, I have to click on links in Web pages multiple times before they open. This only occurs rarely on the computer running Windows XP and occurs almost every time someone attempts to open a link on the computer running Windows 7. The link will usually open on the second click, but the computer running Windows 7 sometimes requires a link to be clicked three times before it will open. When links do not open, the browser's loading animation plays and the status stays at "Connecting" until the connection times out. Restarting the browser helps for a few minutes and reinstalling Windows eliminates the problem for a few hours, but it still comes back. What is going on?

[retiredcaps]

For things like this, I like to open a dos window and send a continuous ping like

ping -t 208.67.222.222

The above is the DNS server over at opendns.com

If the pings come back continuously, then you know it is likely not a network problem.

If you really want to see what is going on, then download something like wireshark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark

and see why your http sessions are hanging.

I like to capture a "good" http session so I have a reference for later on.

[shovenose]

Are you on AT&T?
Switch to Comcast :P
That's my plan

[mattch]

Originally Posted by shovenose

Are you on AT&T?
Switch to Comcast :P
That's my plan

lol - imho, both suck, actually they all suck, but we HAVE TO HAVE IT. ALTHOUGH they do have ipv6 rolled out to some customers, where my ISP bright house is slacking!! err

anyway sounds like you may have a virus. For this i would ensure your system is clean before troubleshooting further, save you some time and assurance down the troubleshooting road.


my favs:
combofix
malware bytes

for the pesky google/search redirect, use above then use:
mbrcheck
tdsskiller (kaspersky) and/or the one from symantec tdssfix i think its called.

[mattch]

by any chance is norton 360 or internet security installed on either. OR any toolbars from antivirus? do you have antivirus?

oh also i would def. check the connection, exactly as retiredcaps describes.
I have a feeling your connection is fine since you have other computers working just fine. but bad cables do happen.

[shovenose]

Well switching to Comcast fixed all my problems.

What's odd in your case is that some compters go online just fine.
What software is different on the computers...

[digge]

Can be many things, apart from the things already mentioned it could be some MTU size problem if you use pppoe or similar over dsl. That can behave a bit odd at times.

Could be something with broken/corrupted arp tables in your router, try rebooting the router if you havnt already.

Let us know what you come up with from all the posts so we can suggest more things to check.

[lti]

Originally Posted by shovenose

Are you on AT&T?
Switch to Comcast :P
That's my plan

I am using CenturyLink DSL.

Originally Posted by mattch

by any chance is norton 360 or internet security installed on either. OR any toolbars from antivirus? do you have antivirus?

oh also i would def. check the connection, exactly as retiredcaps describes.
I have a feeling your connection is fine since you have other computers working just fine. but bad cables do happen.

These two computers have Norton Internet Security installed. All of the "threats" it has detected are false positives and tracking cookies (it hasn't detected a single real threat) and it doesn't load on the computer running Windows 7 until two minutes after Windows has finished booting, so I should look for different antivirus software.

The computer running Windows 7 is using a wireless connection, but the same problem exists with a wired connection using a known good cable. One of the computers that works properly is also using the wireless connection.

Originally Posted by shovenose

What's odd in your case is that some compters go online just fine.
What software is different on the computers...

The antivirus software is the only thing I can think of. The other computers are using different antivirus software. One of the working computers has the same connection issues in Chrome, but all other browsers work fine.

Originally Posted by mattch

anyway sounds like you may have a virus. For this i would ensure your system is clean before troubleshooting further, save you some time and assurance down the troubleshooting road.


my favs:
combofix
malware bytes

for the pesky google/search redirect, use above then use:
mbrcheck
tdsskiller (kaspersky) and/or the one from symantec tdssfix i think its called.

The computer running XP is so badly infected that it will barely run, and it has been that way for years. It is constantly sending spam E-mails to everyone in an AOL or MSN address book. Deleting the entire address book stops the spam, and the user of that computer thinks that there is no malware on it because Norton doesn't find anything. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about it. The user has requested that no security software should be installed except Norton, and that computer is used for such a "critical" task that there is no time to reinstall Windows. I hope that none of the malware spreads across a network because all of Toshiba's attempts to repair the computer running Windows 7 have used all of the activations for Windows and Microsoft Office. I already had to call Microsoft to activate Office, and no free alternatives to Office exist that support the features that my college teachers expect me to use.

[mbrandon]

I don't think that it is a matter that concerns your computer hardware at all. Your best bet is to monitor how the network activity is keeping up as that could pretty much spring a lot of stuff to run at the background even without the user fully gaining knowledge over it and what is being utilized. You just have to be really familiar and versed with it. Hope this helps.

[mariushm]

Just set up temporarily a router/switch with management and block his connection from the router.
When he notices he has no internet, you can just say the viruses on his computer finally killed his operating system and he'll suddenly find the time for a reinstall.

Actually, you could just go on and rename some system files in the root of c:\ and you won't have to bother with extra hardware.

Or... how about you print some fake warning letters as if they come from the ISP in which they say if he won't clean the computers his internet connection will be terminated? Maybe that will change his mind..

Or, when he's not home/sleeping/whatever pull out the drive, mount the drive in another system and do as best as you can to clean it.

[lti]

I finally installed Wireshark on my laptop (the computer running Windows 7), and it looks like the computer is sending the same request over and over without letting the server respond. I will post a log later.

[joshnz]

I had a simalar issue but I didn't know the second device had the same issue. It turned out the second device was using dhcp and when my pc was off and the second device conected it took my static ip. This was solved by moving the dhcp pool start address out of the range of all the pc's with static ip's.
I always wondered why it was said that it was bad pratice to have both on the same network.