Hello and a gripe right off the bat, lol

I love MajorGeeks.com and have been using the site for a long time but I have one major problem. Compared to the other sites I visit daily for my freeware fixes, MajorGeeks is SLOW, SLOW, SLOW to start downloads no matter what server I try even the author's site. Is there some technical reason downloads take so dang long to start? Sometimes they take so long that the tab returns to the main menu without ever starting the download. And yes, I've clicked the "if its taking a long time click here".

Is there too much load for too little server power? If so what about soliciting donations to buy more server juice. Or maybe tweaks to whatever OS is running the servers?

It's no big deal if there's only a few things to download, but if I'm gone for a few days well you guys do such a good job there's 3 days worth of new stuff to scrape. Any help in speeding up download starting would be appreciated.

Otherwise, outstanding site. :cool

 

Okay I'll check some of your suggestions. However, the problem isn't the download speed. Once a download starts its quick. And I'm not using a download manager since most don't allow me to rename the download. I don't have this problem with other sites I download from daily and I won't mention them out of courtesy to you. Really download speeds are no problem from any site I use. It's just the wait time before the download starts at Majorgeeks and yeah I've tried all the servers.

Okay your questions: 1) No I haven't tried using another machine because I don't have one. Just for spec info, I run Windows XP SP3, off a 54mbps wi-fi at a public library (and yeah they could be the problem), with 2GB of 800Mhz DDR2, 1.5TB of SATA 300, and an Athlon X2 5200+ so I don't think its hardware.
2) Software wise I have very little installed and run mainly portable apps that either I've portablized or were obtained that way.
3) Security software in case its causing a glitch is Avast AV, EMSI A-squared Anti-Malware, KeyScrambler 2.2.x (whatever the latest is), WinPatrol, Zone Alarm Pro, Comodo Memory Firewall, and Comodo BOClean. (ok, so I'm paranoid, lol)

If I had another network to check from I could determine if its this particular wi-fi or not but unfortunately I don't.

The backbone is out of my control so if that's it well too bad for me.

I'll run some tests with what you recommended, try disabling one resident program at a time, see what happens and let you know in case I discover some conflict.

Thanks for listening and keep up the great work.

 

Well you know the old thing about cars that are acting up. As soon as you take them to the mechanic they don't cooperate and mess up for them. So as soon as I try the SP3 download to time start times and throughput of course I don't have a problem.................... All servers started right up with the download and i was hitting about 120kbps. Uh so forget it for now. I'll report back with stats and such if this happens again. Probably griping about it fixed the problem. A Murphy thing.

 

/nods This is the best explanation for your issue (by halo). I'ld get yourself a nice lil gui program called neotrace (formally made by neoworx but now owned by mcafee, but luckily they didn't ruin the integrity of the software) that will tell you what your weakest link, so to speak, is. Another idea is to switch up your primary DNS with your secondary DNS and test that out in neotrace (I only mention this due to lack of info about your ISP, in reality this may change nothing, but some private ISP's do know what they're doing and have their secondary DNS on a different node path). Perhaps there's a lot of activity on your primary in that node path.

But newho, yeah run a trace and pay attention to the node hopps delay in ms to each node. May help in pin pointing the issue.