MS Vista Question

[Aimhigh]

I hope I can adequately state my question...I am running MS Vista on a Toshiba laptop. When I click on my internet connection and then the "view status" area; it reflects a fairly rapidly increasing number for "bytes received"...is this normal? Periodically my computer runs quite slowly...I'm on Hughes.net satellite which I've figured might be the reason for such slowness. I have run two different virus checkers against my computer, to no avail...appreciate any input you may have.

[tsigwing]

I hope I can adequately state my question...I am running MS Vista on a Toshiba laptop. When I click on my internet connection and then the "view status" area; it reflects a fairly rapidly increasing number for "bytes received"...is this normal? Periodically my computer runs quite slowly...I'm on Hughes.net satellite which I've figured might be the reason for such slowness. I have run two different virus checkers against my computer, to no avail...appreciate any input you may have.

bytes are information, so yes it should go up. your speed is going to be very slow on a satellite, you can go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and check your speed

[BigBoyinMS]

Do you have a wireless network setup? If so, and you don't have it secured then your neighbors could be connecting to your signal. I had that happen when I first set up my wireless.

[Trader]

When I was with Hughes I used to get about 700 bps download and 50 bps upload.

 

BUT.....If you exceed the usage limit as per your contract with them, they slow you down to about the same as dial up speed for 24 hours.

 

If you call them up they can show you how to check for that.

They call it their "fair access policy" or something like that.

 

Whenever I tried to download video it seemed I got dinged!

[jonesy]

your virus programs will slow things down, and you should only have one on at a time, more then one spyware program is ok, only one virus program should be on pc at a time.

[Aimhigh]

bytes are information, so yes it should go up. your speed is going to be very slow on a satellite, you can go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and check your speed

 

But it just continues to increase...just ck'd it and it is now at 8MB rec'd...our desktop does not do this...of course, it's OS is XP.

[Aimhigh]

Do you have a wireless network setup? If so, and you don't have it secured then your neighbors could be connecting to your signal. I had that happen when I first set up my wireless.

 

it is secured...there are no indications of anyone else on the system.

[kj5ix]

Simply do a ping test to say Yahoo.com, and look at your return times in ms' Your system should be in the neighborhood of 650 to 900 ms' Slow compared to DSL, but faster than dial up ( but not much ) If you are on a residential system, and an Office system the Company chokes down through put at different times of day to residential customers. Lat at night ( past midnight it could be as much as three times faster when the system is open,,,

 

Launch a DOS Shell by going to the menu, and at the bottom type in "cmd"

A black DOS screen will come up: Type in "ping yahoo.com" and hit enter. You will get 4 returns. What you are looking for is the next to the last thing in the line Time=1234. That number is the return time in mil-seconds ms' I have seen numbers as large as the 1234 example I gave, and higher in the noon to 3PM time frame on Starband, and Hughes. A number of 650 to 900 is in the download frame for a residential system.

[Guest tx2sturgis]

I think Aimhigh is asking if its normal for there to be incoming or outgoing data when the computer is supposed to be 'idle' and the answer is, yes and no.

 

It may be doing normal updates and maintenance, or checkin for email, that sort of thing, or it MIGHT be compromised, and have a virus program thats in contact with its host.

 

I'd turn on the firewall and/or download a good third party firewall and see if it helps.