Firewall problem, possibly

[xero]

I have lately had problems with downloads running very slowly or not at all.

Several months back I allowed myself to be persuaded to change from Zone Alarm (which I liked) to Comodo, which I have learned to live with.

Both with ZA and Comodo I have had downloads run very quickly when there is a yellow triangle or even a red circle, and I don't often see the green icon that I usually got with the Windows firewall.

I now have several downloads showing a blue arrow but no activity (in the case of 3 of these I checked with the indexing site and the torrents have all been downloaded 100+ times since I added them, but I have gotten squat. Plus I can't get anything from the Open Office torrent, which is usually a good indicator of how well the connection is/isn't working.

I have run a test with Glasnost (thanks for providing that link, very thorough) and the results indicated no apparent throttling (though sometimes when I seed for long periods the speed does drop off for a time then pick up again, and it is the same torrents that are affected. I am also fairly sure I have the client set up properly, (been using it for nearly 2 years so I think I have that sorted), speed settings etc, I went over all settings prior to making this post

I have had a heap of malware problems since mid June, (and several Windows reinstalls since then to deal with them) and I was not always able to pinpoint what the culprit was. A good guide to something I can't find is Spybot - if the system is running well it takes around 15 minutes for a scan, if there is something gumming up the works it can take fifty minutes. Another indicator is files in My Music. When things are running well I just select a folder and click on play selection, when it goes weird I have to right click and select play or play selection.

Since all the Windows reinstall I am running the client as an exe from a thumb drive, reinstalling the torrents after a Windows reinstall is a very slow business, and some torrents always seemed to come up short and I had to "complete" them again, though a force recheck of all torrents (interesting to watch) did help there.

I am using the free version of Comodo, and only the firewall, not the AV.

I think the problem is the firewall, but I have lost count of how many times I have defined µTorrent to as a safe application, and I have also tried adding it to the list of blocked apps then adding it to the trusted apps again.

I seem to be chasing my tail, all antimalware (Spybot, Malwarebytes, and Avast!) scans have shown up no malware, so I am kind of frustrated and out of ideas.

BTW With one of the recent malware issues I sought assistance from the safer networking forum. They spotted uT on a scan (Combofix or HijackThis) and demanded I remove my p2p or assistance would be withdrawn. So people be warned to edit scan results before uploading to that particular forum. Like I would not reinstall it again anyway!

Any ideas on the firewall issue would be appreciated.

One other piece of the puzzle, which might point to something, is that I can upload at a very good rate even when I can't download. The speed test indicates I should be using 2mb with upload set at 186kB/sec, but in reality I rarely get upload exceeding 60kB/sec.

[Switeck]

Your ISP may have burst speeds as high as 2 megabit/sec for upload...but only let you sustain 60 KB/sec (about 0.5 megabit/sec).

"I have had a heap of malware problems since mid June"

Unless you completely format+reinstall, you may still do.

[xero]

After making my post I experimented with different firewalls. Zone Alarm conflicted with my AV, so next attempt was with Jetico Personal Firewall which is working fine on my other computer. No conflicts with anything but still the red circle. Later in the evening one torrent picked up some seeds and downloaded at around 50 kB/sec, still with a red circle - and no action on the other ones.

This morning when still no action I stopped all torrents, disabled DHT, Local Peer Discovery, and Peer exchange (all these not allowed by the torrents in question, but never been a stumbling block before). I then restarted the torents and the ones that had done nothing for 3 days were completed in under 15 minutes! And all with a red circle. Since then another torrent has completed.

None of this makes sense, but a friend said he sometimes thinks there is magic involved. He could be right.

Thankfully the issue does not appear to be malware. I was getting all set for another reinstall, but decided on the above experiments first (I am so tired of reinstalls). So it now appears that I don't have to, yippee!

As for my ISP and burst speeds, 2mb is close to the max download (thoeretically, I have never seen higher than 200kB/sec) I think 60kB/sec is the most they will let me have, occasionally I see uploads go to 75 but that is a momentary event.

I shall check out those links. Not sure if they relate to the problem I was having but never hurts to learn.

Thanks =)