[Q] PC slowing down when network load is high?

[Sir Loin of Beef]

I'm using a Asus P4PE-X/TE with a celeron 1.7, and Win98SE. The BIOS
version is the latest one. I'm using 512 mb of Kingston DDR RAM.

The thing is, when I'm downloading something from the internet via a
cable modem and the dl speed is low at around 1 - 15 k/s, everything
is fine.

However, when the download speed goes higher to around 30-40 k/s, the
pc slows down a lot. The mouse pointer jumps, and there is a delayed
response in all my applications.

What can be causing this?

 

[Access]

I'm using a Asus P4PE-X/TE with a celeron 1.7, and Win98SE. The BIOS
version is the latest one. I'm using 512 mb of Kingston DDR RAM.

The thing is, when I'm downloading something from the internet via a
cable modem and the dl speed is low at around 1 - 15 k/s, everything
is fine.

However, when the download speed goes higher to around 30-40 k/s, the
pc slows down a lot. The mouse pointer jumps, and there is a delayed
response in all my applications.

What can be causing this?

The virus scanner maybe ? Have you checked with the Task Manager which
process consumes the most CPU ?

 

[Paul]

The virus scanner maybe ? Have you checked with the Task Manager which
process consumes the most CPU ?

You might also check that "Delay Transaction" is [Enabled] in the
BIOS. That goes hand in hand with the disk being set up for DMA
versus PIO mode. The DMA setting thing is in Windows. The DMA setting
may even change on its own, if Windows detects errors during
transfers from the disk. Windows may "crank down" the transfer rate,
in an attempt to get reliable transfers to the disk (just like
SCSI interfaces on Sun workstations used to do). So, there is a couple
of other things to check.

HTH,
Paul