Connecting and blue circle taking ages.

[Loose rivets]

Driving me crazy-er.

Pprune etc., instant on this i5 running W10 Pro. I do however, only have 4 gigs but it's been fine for ages. Now some of the sites are timing out before I get a 'connection'.

Nearly all calls to sites are taking ages. It seems I'm not alone*. Anyone else having problems as it would be nice to delve into this with more knowledge than my aged brain can muster.


My other PC with a new W10 install and FF is almost instant and the word Connecting does not show.

Back to this one. I've done a full scan with MS Defender**, turned that off and run Malwharebytes, all with no results. I've switched off the Plug-Ins and it's just the same.

*https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/998185

** Not using my copy of Kaspersky while the Russians are being the way they are. I can imagine a scenario where millions of PCs are rendered useless with one word from Putin. You may think that's paranoid logic but as a strategy I can't fault it. Kasper is so deeply entwined in even ordinary PC's that there is nothing it doesn't know about my day to day searches. All this, and it's supplied by Barclays - who have awarded me two lots of 25 quids for sorting Kasper/FireFox issues out. Oh, and a letter of apology for doubting me.

[Loose rivets]

Now become a major issue. PPRuNe no problem at all but even Headlines can time out. Right now at a total loss.

Doing a search on the net is hard because of the masses of folk asking about not connecting to their routers. No matter how I word it, back they come.

Other computers in the room are okay. Don't want to do a reinstall because of the time, and my MS Office is up to its 3 seats and might have some explaining to do. Also, if it's done it once, a reinstall might just be a waste of time.

[andytug]

Apologies if you've already tried any if this....

Does the same happen with a different browser (IE, Edge or Chrome)? If not may be worth just uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox.

Is the computer wired or wireless, and have you done any ping test?

[Loose rivets]

Yes, to the last. Speeds and ping about where they were - 10 down and .8 up. Uninspiring, but the same.

IE or whatever it's called now is not much better. Different, but useless. Call something up and look at a white screen until there's ordinary text down the left side and then This site is not available now.

Oh, my. Will I ever do any actual work?

I'll have to go back to a restore point, but sadly, that'll take out my MS Office.

[andytug]

If you do have to do that and you lose MSOffice I'd look at LibreOffice or OpenOffice to replace it, both are free, and in the case of LibreOffice it's more like the older 97 version without the ribbon if you prefer. I use it on Linux and if you're not bothered about The really complex bits of MSOffice it's a perfectly fine alternative, opens all MSOffice formats, etc.

[Loose rivets]

I won't lose it, but it's just the kerfuffle of jogging them into allowing a change when they know just how many seats I have. Again, easy contacts in Texas, but no so here. Or is it simply that time has gone by? But back 3 years a lady somewhere said, 'yes, you've got one seat left'. Powerful record systems in Microsoft.

Changing a word processor would be like going from Boeing to Airbus. They both fly, but chalk and cheese in many ways. The learning curve from Word Perfect to Word was a serious investment for my old brain - I was a stranger in a strange land for a while.

Sadly, I never really got on with the free ones, despite admiring the sheer effort folk put in to develop them.

However, something's afoot. Even our computer thread was delayed for Connecting just now. I skidded over to the new W10 install and IE found it instantly.

It's a worry. :suspect:

[pilotbarony]

In Task Manager, are all your applications & processes normal? If you go into the Performance tab as well, you can see your internet throughput as well. I would compare the info with the computer that is working & see if they're both the same.

[Loose rivets]

Sorry, yes I did do that, thanks.

I'm hopeful that what's amiss is the WiFi connection in general, but W10's interaction with that, in particular.

Since Downloading is an order of magnitude faster than uploading (and some) I wondered if W10 (With everything in Cortana switched off) was sending stuff back to who-knows-where and in the that direction it was taking an age before the modest (12m to-me) traffic was allowed to complete.

To test it in the past, I had run the phone cable to my room and then used a short yellow lead from that. I'm not that's not a good idea so today borrowed a long yellow lead, keeping the telephone wire below a metre. I find it hard to believe that would make that much difference, but right now, hard wired, it seems to be okay after ages of being a PITA.

[andytug]

Telephone to router wire (RJ11 4 connectors) is best as short as possible unless you can get a shielded one (ours is 10m with no loss). PC to router cable (RJ45 8 connectors) can go up to 100m in theory without loss. If your device never moves I would always wire it where possible. Wireless g tops out at way less than a lot of people's Internet speeds, which leads to them thinking they're getting less than they paid for/were advertised.

[Loose rivets]

I've never been too sure about the reason for that. I see the old GPO cables even had substantial shielding and indeed armour, but is it that the signal on that wire is more susceptible to RFI than the other side of the Router?

Some of the wires I've seen going to BT wall sockets have been very poor. Indeed, many years ago I wired my house for multiple phone extensions with not a thought of one day having computers fed by them. Now I come to think of it, I recall rewiring some of them for that very reason.

It's just that the wire I've borrowed looks like a twisted pair, but each part is only c 2mm. I'm not sure how much protection that's offering and I doubt our local Guru would like me doing an exploratory section.