Question Upload/Download speeds drop to basically zero on PC startup ?

[yotimelon]

I've read o couple of other threads that seem similar to my issue but none seem to have this exact issue.

It's a bit of a strange one, I'm hoping some absolute legend can help me fix this.

When I power on my PC the Internet connection will be at a stable 15up/2down (my normal speed, no ftth yet...) for about a minute. Then it will drop to 0.02up/0.02down. (these are average figures) the Internet becomes essentially un useble. This happens both wired and wireless and with both the on board wifi and a USB dongle. Not only that but it tanks the Internet connection for every device in the house at the same time? As if it is sucking up all the bandwidth as well. As soon as I disconnect it from the netwrok, the speed on the other devices returns to normal.

I've built a few PCs in my time, including the effected one, so I'm pretty good with at least basic level trouble shooting. I've checked the issue on other connections including hotspoting my phone. I've updated and checked for bad drivers on the motherboard. Checked for outdated or failed windows updates. Tried different ethernet cables, tried different WiFi dongles. Called my ISP to check on their end and to confirm the router is working fine.

I'm hoping someone has heard of something similar and can recommend a solution.

Hopefully it's somthing very basic that I've missed, but that could be wishful thinking 😅

I will answer any question as best I can and am very grateful for any assistance from this awesome community 🤘🤘🤘

 

[bill001g]

So if I read this correctly you can run say speedtest on your phone and it works perfectly fine until you connect this suspect device ?

With that small a connection it is pretty easy to overload the internet. What you might check is the network tab in the resource monitor and see what traffic is running. Be careful some numbers are in MBYTES/sec and other mbits/sec.

If it is not traffic related maybe you have some kind of IP conflict. Maybe try to manually set the IP to some IP you know nothing else uses. x.x.x.250 tends to be a good one on most networks. I would disable IPv6 just to be sure it is not causing strange issues while you are changing the IPv4 stuff.

Maybe try to boot a linux USB image. This will eliminate some strange software on the pc causing this. Problem is linux does not run many of the things people need and when you run from a USB image it is harder to install stuff, you do not want to install anything on your windows drive.

 

[yotimelon]

Yes thats right, I have tested with multiple devices. Speed test will read as normal for my connection until I connect the effected PC. I've had bottleneck issues before but this seems sooo oddly specific, it's baffling. It also seems to have happend randomly at some point as the PC has worked fine with no issues for about a year, connecting just fine and not effecting the network. That's why my first thought was a driver issue or an update issue, but that seems less likely now.

I will definitely try setting a manual IP as you suggest, that seems like a logical next step that I hadn't considerd.

I've never booted a Linux image before, forgive me for my ignorance; would I be able to run that from USB just to test the network? And therefore rule out a hardware issue? Is that what you meant? Sorry 😅

 

[bill001g]

That is exactly what I meant with the linux image. I wish I could give you a recommendation, but I have a very old one that I always use. These are different than a install linux image even though many can both install and run as a independent image.
Many times these are designed to fix broken windows installs so they have extra tools. All I have seen come with a browser so you can run speedtest.

Maybe someone else who sees this thread has a recommendation for a linux boot image that works well.

 

[yotimelon]

Thank you so much for the responses, my friend! Its really appreciated

However on further inspection, it looks as though my Adobe creative cloud app has been misbehaving and is sucking every last drop of bandwidth without actually showing as doing so, very odd. But disabling it fixes the problem completely, so it looks as though it was 100% software, just not what I thought it would be 😅

I'm still trying to find a permanent solution to the issue, but at least I have diagnosed the problem.

Thanks again for your help!!

 

[bill001g]

This is where you have app developer who lives in a apartment in a big city and has no clue what internet is like for a lot of people. Not sure where the $142 billion has gone from the last 2 spending bills that was support to be used to upgrade these type of networks.