Home Networking / Router / & WiFi Gateway Help

[monkeyblair]

I have an Optiplex G620 desktop that I’ve owned for about 4 years that I bought primarily to do video editing.  I outfitted it with a video card, IEEE port and 4 megs of RAM.  When my other computer died it became my main computer about a year ago.

For the last several months (particularly the last 3) I’ve noticed that it has slowed down drastically.  This is particularly true when trying to open or close emails or to move emails from one folder to the next.  I originally thought that functions involving transferring files in general were also slow and I replaced my hard drive with a new Terabyte HD and have selectively reloaded Google Chrome and my video editing software.  The problem also occurs with Internet Explorer.

While I don’t notice that moving files are slow I still have problems with email and it is a little slow when accessing websites.  When I’m opening email I actually get an error message sometimes as it is taking forever to load “No data received.  Unable to load webpage because server sent no data”.  I hooked up my laptop using Ethernet (the desktop is directly connected to the gateway (modem + router) and have played around with plugging the desktop into different router ports and while the laptop works well either by wi-fi  or by Ethernet the desktop crawls.  I then took my desktop over to my friend’s house and plugged it into his router  (to minimize the possibility that an network adapter card or a block in my Norton Firewall access) to see if I still had the problem.  The problem is gone there.  I changed the Ethernet cable (no change).  I checked to see if the DNS was the same on both computers when they were connected to the router (they were).

Other info is the fact that Comcast replaced my old Motorolla modem with an Arris gateway about 3 mos ago.  It’s possible that is about when the problem began.  So I cleared the IP settings and then restored them.

Any ideas? 

[Baric]

If by "Arris gateway" you mean one of the Comcast-branded Xfinity Wireless Gateways, I would recommend you either get it replaced with a modem or EMTA, or have it placed into bridge modem and use your own decent wireless router.  These gateways are total junk.

That said, it sounds like you have an issue on the desktop itself.  If you plug in the laptop to the same port on the gateway and it works fine, then the problem is either the desktop or some issue between the desktop's network adapter and the gateway.  Try upgrading the desktop's network adapter driver, or install a new adapter and try that.

[monkeyblair]

Baric

Thanks for the rapid reply.

While what you say might be true the Arris Router seems to be working fine with Wi-Fi and when plugging the laptop into the Arris device.  And the computer works fine when I plug it into my friend's linksys Router which baffles me (you would think that if the desktop had NIC problems it would show up with both Routers.  I probably will take your advice because I can't think of anything else to do, but it seems to me that combination is the problem but I can't prove which side is the problem which is why I posted here.

Bob  (not a networking expert).