Is uTorrent causing my problems?

[Cephus]

I've posted this all over the place and nobody seems to have a clue why it's happening so I'm going to try it one more time here.

I'm running WinXP Pro SP2 on an Athlon64 3400+ and 2GB RAM. I've got uTorrent 1.5 build 437 running and have been very happy with it. I'm on a 1.5/384 connection, verified many times over the past couple of days through both the Broadbandreports and Verizon speed tests, but I have my upload capped at 28k, mostly because anything more than that has been killing my download speed. I'd like to up my uploads, but right now, that's low on my list of priorities as you'll see in a second.

The problem is that something is completely killing my computer's connection, not only to the net, but to the local LAN as well. It's sporatic, but from time to time, I'll be trying to log onto Google, for instance, and the connection will time out. All connections will time out. All of my torrents will go red and time out, although my network connection stays green. All of my speeds will drop to less than 5k down total, although my upload will remain the same.

So far, the only way I've found to fix this is to clear the IE cache or reboot the system. The funny thing is... I'm using Firefox, not IE. If I do that, I'll get speed and connectivity back, at least for a little while. I just did it and I'm downloading at about 30k, whereas before I did it, I was getting 0.3k.

I've already been through all the basics, there are no viruses, no spyware, changed out all the cables, got the latest NIC drivers, tried changing routers, it's a fresh install of WinXP, I just put in a new big hard drive a couple weeks ago, all of the rest of my software runs flawlessly, there's nothing odd in my process list, my CPU load never goes above 4-5%, plenty of RAM available, yadda yadda. The only thing I haven't done is install a new NIC, mostly because I can't imagine that clearing the IE cache is going to have an effect on hardware the way it does, but I could be wrong.

I just can't maintain a good connection to the net. Is it possible that uTorrent is doing something weird in the background and overloading my connection? When it happens, I'm dead in the water. I can't even log into the router, and I'm hardwired to it. The only reason I'm thinking maybe uTorrent has something to do with it is that I shut it down and things improved dramatically.

Thanks for any suggestions. I'm really getting sick of running at dial-up speeds.

[Firon]

What happens if you turn off DHT? And well, if you've changed routers and it even kills your LAN connection, it probably is your NIC that can't take something.

[Cephus]

I haven't tried turning off DHT but I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I'm leaning toward a NIC problem as well, it's an easy fix, I've got a new NIC sitting on my desk as we speak and I'll see if I can stick it in today and see how that helps. It's just strange that the IE cache is directly affecting a piece of hardware.

[Firon]

Please don't quote the post directly before yours.

And well, I don't know why clearing the cache helps. Maybe it's doing DHCP renew too or something!

[Cephus]

I wouldn't think it's doing a renew since I never use IE. The only time it gets started is to clear the cache.

Like now, for example. My current total download speed is 4.8k. Going to clear the cache... opening IE, clearing cookies/files/history...

Now I'm downloading at 14k. Go figure.

Disabling DHT didn't seem to change anything. I went ahead and upgraded the firmware in the router, just for kicks, but it didn't have any effect either. Next... the NIC tradeout.

[Cephus]

Turns out the problem was a faulty motherboard. I pulled the case last night to put in another NIC and the CPU fan fell out. The little plastic pieces that hold it to the motherboard sheared clean off (and this is a new motherboard). Closer examination showed that the entire fan mount was cracked, I'm surprised that it lasted as long as it did.

So today, back to the computer store to trade out the mobo. They said they'd never seen a case where the plastic just fell apart like that, especially on a board that's just a couple months old. The new one went in and everything works perfectly. Apparently, not only was it a bad fan mount, it was a bad onboard NIC and probably a lot of other things as well.

Thanks to everyone, especially Firon, for your help and suggestions!

[Firon]

Wow... what are the odds of that?

I'm glad you figured out the problem!

[Switeck]

Hopefully your CPU, ram, and whatever else plugged into your old motherboard was salvageable.

Sadly, if one gets corrupted due to crossed wires somewhere...the other parts often do too.