Cable Modem Slowness

The original hard drive in my computer went bad and I had to replace it with another like kind that Gateway sent me under my warranty. After reinstalling the drive, my cable modem is terribly slow and sluggish about 90% of the time.

I have a Scientific Atlanta DPX 110 modem and am on Adelphia via USB 2 connection. I'm running WinXP Home on a 2.4ghz P4 machine with 512mb of RAM.

I have upgraded to the newest drivers on everything, applied registry patches from cablesmodems.org to improve the speed, but all to no avail. By the way, I have everything setup exactly as I did on the bad drive. I used the exact same registry tweaks and was able to download at over 200kbps and browse very quickly before the changeout of the drive.

I have basically tried everything that I know of to get this to run smooth and fast like it did but to no avail. I get download rates anywhere between 23kbps up to 151kbps. I've contacted Adelphia and everything checks out fine on their end.

This has got to have something to do with my computer and I just cannot figure it out.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what to do or try?

 

Try going to www.dslreports.com and click on the link called "Our Tools" and run the speed test. You'll need some java installed on your box to run it. If the results aren't that great, it will offer some remedies.

When I run the Speed Test on my Comcast cable modem connection, I get between "Insane" and "Dude" . Before Comcast doubled their download speed a couple of weeks ago, I used to come in at "Insane ". I would think that you should place around there too. My downloads have been averaging between 350kbps and 400kbps but I used Download Accelerator which opens up four simultaneous download streams so that may be helping a bit. Good luck - I know if my cable modem was underperforming, I'd freak!

 

Hello Kenny
I have to admit your speeds are way low for cable.
I have wracked my mind trying to connect the two items together, ie the new HDD and slow internet speed.
On the surface, your problem makes about as much sense as a dog sneezing causing a fuse to burn out in your electrical panel box
So here goes with a suggestion from "out in left field "

Please have a look at this link:

http://www.chetnet.co.uk/portal/forum/viewtopic.php?p=614

Then have a look at this link:

http://www.burningissues.net/ikonboard/act/ST&/f/17&t=9.htm

Bottom line, check to see that the new HDD is busmastered to reduce the load on your CPU and is UDMA 5 or 6 thus helping the CPU concentrate it's energy on the USB port instead of the HDD.

If possible, install a NIC instead of using the USB port for your cable modem, reducing the USB's dependance on the CPU and slowing your connection.

I checked around and it seems Adelphi customers are getting about the same as my Comcast speeds 1500/256.
Many are posting down speeds over 3000.

That dslreports link that Chiles4 provided is a good one for many things besides the speed test.
They have a "tweak test" that you should do also.
RWIN comes into play here too.

If all else fails, ask Adelphi to roll a truck to you for a look see on your end.

Don't know if this will help but it's my $.02 worth for now

Daddad

 

I also recommend replacing the USB connection with a NIC. That's the first thing I asked the tech when he came to install internet cable a while ago. Which is better? USB or a NIC? He said go with the NIC.

 

Hey guys...

Just wanted to let you all know that I did switch to the NIC connection from USB. I didn't even know I had a built in NIC card until I took a look at my build specs!!

I did reformat my hard drive again just for the heck of it prior to switching to NIC. I was thinking maybe I missed something along the way during the installation of the new drive. Doing that did seem to make a difference all the way around.

Anyway, I hooked up thru NIC and got everything up and going. I'm still having off and on sluggishness but not as frequent. This hookup definitely seems more stable and consistent with download speeds faster than ever before.

Thanks to all who offered advice. Greatly appreciated!