Internet cuts in and out

My internet on my laptop has only been working in bursts. For example, this page loaded half way, stopped for 6 seconds and then loaded the bottom of the page.

I am using cFosSpeed 6.6 to monitor my internet usage on this laptop and I can see the usage go up and down, sometimes at random. The most common thing that has been happening is the internet will be active for 6 seconds, then no traffic for 6 seconds.

This problem is not present on my entire network, as I can play PS3 just fine online.

This problem makes it impossible to stream music and play games, in fact, I lost a bit of money today on poker because my connection cut out so I'm pretty upset.

Any help is appreciated.

 

What OS and Browser are you using?

Take a look at the Task Manager and see if something is randomly running CPU Usage to 100%

 

OS 7 and this is a cross-browser problem, it even happens when running games without a browser. My CPU usage does randomly spike, sometimes up to 80 or 90 percent.

I really don't know what I can do at this point, I got cFosSpeed to try to see what was causing this, but all I can tell is that yes, its cuts out. And the traffic is moves up and down in a rhythm, not always to 0% but its never an even amount of traffic moving through.

 

If your CPU is spiking to 90%, that's probably the problem. Watch the Task Manager to see what specifically is using the processor.

 

I have chrome open now with a lot of tabs open and its doing it now, there are about 20 chrome processes in task manager, and in the resource monitor I see a process called: "System Interrupts" with the description: "deferred procedure calls and interrupt service routines" With a "-" value for the PID, threads, and operating system.

I don't know really want this in the malware forum but the CPU usage will go from 80-90% to 5% if I am watching it, I have seen this same behavior on previous computers on my network but a little different - let me explain.. on my old laptop I had a webcam, and I was suspicious of a remote attacker on my computer, so I did a little test: I opened task manager and would leave it open and on top at all times, I would walk out of the view of the webcam and the CPU usage would go up to 90% plus, but when I walked into its line of sight it would drop down to 5-10%. A few people are witness to this..

I don't want to try to kick them off my network as bad as I want to make my internet stay connected consistently without spurts of no traffic.

As for watching the CPU usage when the internet cuts out, I have tried: when the traffic drops to 0 on cFosSpeed I open task manager as fast as I can and I see the CPU usually around 80-90% but then it quickly drops to around 10-15% and sometimes get lower to around 3-5%.. but how can I tell what process is using more CPU vs memory?

 

Stop watching cFosSpeed and watch task manager instead. Lots of chats and websites will "refresh" periodically and spike the use. More important to fixing your problem is to figure out which processes are spiking.

Have task manager open on the Processes tab, have the check box at the bottom called Show processes from all users checked. Sort the processes by the CPU column by clicking on the grey CPU name at the top of the column. System Idle Process should be at the top of the list and will be in the 90's if not much is running. You can do the same with Mem Usage column to watch what programs are using the most memory.

As for your camera test, when nothing is in the frame to process and transmit, cpu does little. When there are moving images, cpu must take that "movie", process and send it. Movement will change the use of the processor and memory, that is not unexpected. If it's taking 90% of processor and memory, you should try turning down the resolution, changing the color type, or just turning it off when you don't need it. Test your theory again with the internet disconnected. Does movement in the camera still make the processor use go up? It should.

Once you know what processes are hogging the CPU and memory, you will be able to adjust them or disable them. Your problem does not seem to be connection speed, rather lack of available computer resources to keep your games and music streaming smoothing.

 

Thank you for the reply.

When ordered by CPU the top result is Chrome, which I am using now to type this, at a value of "2". I dont see anything getting above 10 of whatever this value is measured in...

 

The problem is on a wireless connection? Can you connect to the router with an ethernet cable and see if you still have the same issue? Have the drivers for the wireless card been updated? Or have they been recently updated, perhaps it's a bad update that would benefit from being rolled back?

Best to see if changing from wireless to wired solves the issue. If you can isolate it to the wireless card, then check the drivers, etc. If you can't isolate it to the wireless card, it's in the computer, the processes, the network, conflicting IP, device with the same IP as the router on the network, some of the other things we are looking at.

In fact, now that I say that, i have seen this exact behavior when someone unknowingly attached a print server to the network, thinking it was just a switch. The print server's default IP was 192.168.1.1 and the router's default IP was the same. The computers would flip between seeing the router and the print server as the gateway and we would be down, then up, then down, then up! This could also happen if another device on the network has an IP that is conflicting with your computer. Are you static or DHCP? You haven't had a conflicting IP message but there could still be an issue there too.

What security do you have on your wireless? Can you see what devices are attached to the router in the interface? It should show what IP each device was issued. If you have the IP scheme of 192.168.1.X or 192.168.0.X then you might also consider changing it to something more random. I use 192.168.171.X right now.