[ismiseluke]

Hi, first time using this site so apologies in advance if I botch up on etiquette!

I have a problem with my download speed. We have a 60Mbps download speed package from our ISP however my PC is getting nowhere near that.

My PC download speed is averaging at only 3Mbps - checked on speedtest.net

A screenshot of my PC specs is also attached.

I am using a wifi network card: Realtek RTL8188CU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter

My brother's PC which is using the same model wifi network card and is the same distance from the router is getting an average of 30Mbps.

Today I re-installed windows 7 and I have moved my PC into the same room as the router to see if distance was causing the problem, it's not, the speed is the same. I then connected the PC to the router using an Ethernet cable and using speedtest.net and I got an average speed of 60Mbps.

I would like to rely on my wifi as running a cable through the house or moving the router is difficult. Can anyone tell me why my wifi speed is so slow and if it can be improved?

Additional notes that may be relevant:

- The internal network card is also painfully slow, it's currently disabled. (model on specs page).

- My connection has dropped quite a lot causing downloads to fail.

-When I reconnect to the internet using my wifi network card I get an average download speed of 28Mbps for about 10-15. It then drops back down to an average of 3Mbps.

-There are 2 PCs and 3 laptops that use the wifi on this router. (only my PC is slow)

- The PC had some other issues lately, for example transferring files to external drives seemed overly slow. I since re-installed windows and tested it and it seemed fine.

-When re-installing windows 7 there were two partitions. One empty that had 230GB on it, however I was unable to install windows in it as it said that it could fail soon. So I formatted the other partition and installed windows there.

Okay I think that's all, if anyone could help it would be great!

Thanks a million.

ADDITIONAL INFO JUST IN! A warning just popped up. Screenshot attached. Could the problems be linked?

I did HDDSCAN tests of both my drives. Screenshots attached.

 

[TheCyberMan]

Hi and welcome to TSF,

It does look as though your hard drive is having problems.

First thing to do is to backup the hard drive to an external hard drive this will inlcude your system and data and recovery partition.

Acronis true image or macrium reflect is good for doing this.

Then do a second backup of your data only to another ext hdd.

Download the hitachi hdd diagnostics tool from their website and test your hdd using a long or extended test and see hwo many errors are found and if they can be repaired.

You can download the drive fitness tool below:
Downloads

Please backup first tho just in case the hard drive goes before you get chance to test or after the repair the hdd is not accessible because the repairs marked bad sectors which may include any boot data or OS system files.

 

[ismiseluke]

Hi cyberman, thanks for your advice.

Here are the hitachi hdd diagnostics tool results:

imgur: the simple image sharer

imgur: the simple image sharer

imgur: the simple image sharer

Not very helpful are they?

 

[ismiseluke]

Hi cyberman, thanks for your advice.

Here are the hitachi hdd diagnostics tool results


Not very helpful are they?

 

[TheCyberMan]

Was that run on the hitachi hdd or the western digital drive?

 

[ismiseluke]

The Western Digital Drive aka WDC WD2500JS-75NCB3 is the only one that appears (the other is just my external hard drive). However you can see I was able to do a HDDSCAN of both from my first post.

 

[TheCyberMan]

Hi is your western digital drive a caviar green drive if it is can you download the tool below and run the extended test:

WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD Green / GP

Please backup your system and data before proceeding and a second backup of your data to your external hard drive.

 

[ismiseluke]

Yep Caviar green. I downloaded the tool, extracted it and burned it onto a CD because I don't have a floppy disk drive. I then rebooted and entered the boot menu. Then booted from the CD drive. As soon as I did that it performed a check of my hard drive. There were no options to view results. It then automatically launched Windows. I'm not sure what outcome was supposed to be achieved.

I tried WinDFT again and achieved the same results as before in the tests.

I then rebooted again and attempted to launch from the CD, however it won't allow me anymore, it simply loads up Windows as soon as I select the CD drive.

 

[TheCyberMan]

Go into the bios upon boot use the relevant key and under boot priority or boot options set your cd drive as the firt boot device and save and exit bios.

Then try and boot from cd.

Other option when switing on computer press F12 or F9 depends on brand of computer and select to boot from your optical or dc/dvd drive.

 

[Dennis_Fused]

Even with a HD issue, the speed test should reflect just fine. It would be actual download speeds that suffer.

You can try testmy.net instead, it should give a valid result.