Uninstalling XP PRO sp3 brought back my high uTorrent download speeds

[SkinJob]

Hi, SYSTEM SPEC :

this is my first post but bear with me. P4 3.0Ghz

At first i was gonna be asking for help but i've found XP PRO sp2

a solution that works for me and i thought i would Motorola SB5101E Modem

share it incase it helps anyone. NETGEAR WPN824v2 Router

AVIRA PREMIUM Anti-virus

My uTorrent downloads used to be fine (incl. firewall)

(around 50 kB/s to 500 kB/s) until they suddenly it UNCAPPED 10Mb DSL

slowed down to 1kB to 15kB/s and i couldn't figure out

why. The red light had also appeared at the bottom of

the uTorrent GUI. I spent god knows how long trawling the

Forums and messing about with the configurations of my

Router, uTorrent and FireWall looking for a solution.

I have one other PC in my home network and this still ran fine. We shared the same Router and used the same type of firewall so the problem couldn't be those (i still messed with them though), i realised the only difference was that i hadn't upgraded Windows on the other pc to SP3 (because of low hard drive space incidently) so i tried uninstalling it from mine today and straight away the wee red circle changed to green and my download speeds went back to normal.

This might be of use to someone if they have tried everything else.

Think back, did your speed problems arise around the same time you installed sp3?

[DreadWingKnight]

No. No speed problems whatsoever in the upgrade.

Software firewalls and some antivirus are known to go stupid during service packs.

[Switeck]

"wightcablenorth" is DSL?

What settings are you using, as shown by uTorrent's Speed Guide (CTRL+G)?

[SkinJob]

I dont know why this worked but it did and still is. Maybe something to do with the system restore that it triggered but i'm positive i didn't install anything else. I've seen my dl speeds climb as high as 7-800kB's but right now it's hovering around 100kB's.

Sometimes the red circle appears again but all i need to do now is turn µTorrent off and back on again and it's fixed. It still slows down my web browsing though.

My ISP is smallworld, who used to be called wightcable.They're kind of local i guess, here in SW Scotland and i know they claim the DSL is fibre optic.

my settings are:

Upload Limit - 24 Upload Slots - 25

Connections PT - 125 Connections G- 200

Max Active Torrents- 40 Max Active DL's - 20

[chadrew]

I never had problems with WinXP SP3.

Could it have overwritten your windows firewall settings by any chance?

[thelittlefire]

... Skinjob, your settings are worse than bad. You're trying to essentially leech the torrent without even a shred of hope of sending back your data. Your setup is saying this 20 / (25*40) => 1/50 of a KiBps per peer you can possibly upload to. I know this isn't the case, as you have max connections limited to 200, but start by lowering your Ctrl-G settings to the xx/192 limit and go from there.

It ALSO explains the lowering from 800->100 over time. As you fail to upload to peers they fail to send you more data.

[Switeck]

DSL uses electrical wires. Quite probably, somewhere UP the network the wires butt into a router or switch that uses fiber optic. That's what Cable ISPs do...using HFC (Hybrid Fiber-Cable -- part cable but further up the line switching to faster fiber optics.)

Try the latest v1.8.1 beta. Some serious connectivity bugs were fixed.

Also, try the 320 kilobits/second upload settings in my speed guide (2nd link of my signature).

[SkinJob]

Thanks for info on the settings.

I still don't fully understand the relationship between seeds, peers and dl/ul speeds but i'm getting there.

I've only discovered torrents a couple months back when i got back on the internet after a 8 or 9 year absence. I don't remember bittorrents back then, mind you with a 33k modem they would probably be brain damage.

Incidently (wrong topic i know but...)my ISP said i would have a 0.3Mb/s upload speed when i joined but i did a speed test 2 secs ago(with the firefox add-on) and it said 1.5Mb/s.

If i hadn't of checked this could the differnce in actual upload speed cause problems, cos i never cared about my upload speed until i got µTorrent.

[Switeck]

BitTorrent breathes, lives, and DIES by how well it can upload!

You speed test of 1.5 megabit/second upload could just be a short burst speed your ISP allows. That speed may not be sustainable for more than a minute...you'll have to test to be sure.