in Technology

Troubleshooting computer problems, literally begins at HOME!

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Yesterday I talked about ways to speed up your computer. Today a few more speed up my PC tricks (some of these also work for Macs). Then let’s start talking about troubleshooting.

  1. What are you loading at startup? Open your task manager (ctrl alt delete, select task manager) Win 7, 8 and 10. Click the startup tab. This tells you how many things are loading as your computer boots. The more you load, the slower you go! The same by the way is true for Macintosh computers, a link to how is here http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/17/see-all-running-apps-mac-os-x/.
  2. How many applications are you running? Chrome, Safari, Edge, IE, and Firefox all consume a lot of memory. So does Word, Open Office, Pages and other applications like that. None, by the way as much as video production software. Every program you have loaded slows the response of your computer. To be clear if you have eight gigs of onboard memory you can run more applications than if you have four gigs of onboard memory.

These two steps should help you speed up your computer.

But, what about outside your house. How do you speed up the internet?

  1. Check your pc or mac first. Is it currently performing as expected?
  2. Check your internet connection speed https://www.speedcheck.org/
    1. What is your download rate
    2. What is your upload rate
  3. By the way, save your results every time you check your internet speed. There is variability. If you have DSL, Cable or ISDN the more users in your neighborhood using the internet around you, the slower your connection will e overall.
  4. On a Windows PC, open the cmd program (easy way is ctrl alt delete open task manager and click the file and new command, type in CMD). In your CMD windows type ping, I usually start with Yale.edu. Or the largest company near where I am. The image shared with this post is my actual ping test from this morning. There are a couple of things to notice. The first is that Microsoft.com doesn’t allow pint tests. That has to do with Denial of Service attacks. Not all places support Ping test. Why Yale.Edu? If you are in the US, Yale.EDU is the root Domain Name Server for the internet. I.e., that is the center of the US internet. Notice. The point times in Milliseconds are the same for Virily and Yale.Edu. So Virily is performing pretty well right now (as far as pinging).

Tomorrow we will talk about what to do if the problem isn’t getting to the internet, and it isn’t your computer!

In doing this initial piece, you remove two variables from the equation. (by the way for the ping test 4 or 5 milliseconds is good. More than 20 isn’t Virily having an issue; it is your internet connection.

  • Question of

    Did you know that pinging an address on the internet actually comes from the sound Sonar makes when it pings and object?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you know how many milliseconds it takes for your computer to ping Virily?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Did you know in many cases your uploads are capped by your interent provider?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you have a DSL, ISDN, ADSL or Cable Modem Connection?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you ever check how your PC is preforming when things seem slow?

    • Yes
    • No

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Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

13 Comments

  1. You post a more interesting post every day. I need to read this post even more and try to test your tips a little. Does this work also in Europe?

    1

  3. We have fiber optic internet here and it is great. Virily has problems for sure. But not my computer, for now things are fine. I hope it stays like that.

    1

    • If we are talking 503, 504 errors, yes Virily has some issues. But those are related almost as much to the number of users on the system as to system performance itself.

      Fiber is a great starting point. But how many MS from your computer when you ping Virily.com?

      If it is great than 4/5ms there are potential connection issues.