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bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
Fri Jul 7, 2017, 02:28 PM Jul 2017

Slow internet and Firefox problems

Last edited Sat Jul 8, 2017, 07:43 AM - Edit history (2)

Started around July 1. I still think it is summer network maintenance. But for 2 weeks?

eTrade Pro got very slow. Then eTrade itself would hang in Firefox tabs. For hours.

eTrade IT ran a traceroute that showed the connection was slow and truncated west
of Philadelphia. Told me to call Verizon.

Verizon told me my bandwidth was too slow and I should pay more, and did 2 hours
of tweaking to my PC. Now after all that I (I didn't upgrade the speed), it runs the same, with
eTrade problems in Firefox. He upped the strength of my router, but I think no one can hear
me when I use the telephone.

In Opera however, eTrade and eTrade Pro work very fast, no problems. When I boot eTradePro it launches
a tab in Firefox. That tab hangs, just loads with a blank page. Forever. In Opera though, the eTrade tabs
are fine with Pro running.

Other websites sporadically hang in Firefox too, even late at night.

Is this my Vista machine reaching obsolescence with Firefox?

I'm thinking run a lot of maintenance ... remove and reinstall FF if I can get a clean download which
is proving difficult as well. Are FF browsers under attack? For awhile I thought it was related to using
DU, but the problem is ongoing everywhere.

============== Update=============
I spent 8 hours on this today. I restored the system to last week, installed a new browser, Safari, and Firemin, a memory
clearing program. Now that it's 6 pm things are running well. I still say they're doing regional installs or maintenance. Verizon
guy would not validate the traceroute malfunction. Seems strange. I may go with Safari and Opera next week and see what happens. Tonight they are running well, and Firefox has only had a couple of hung tabs.

============== Update 2=============
Today, Saturday, the internet is fast and crisp as could be. No problems, hangs, slowdowns at all.
They just try to distract you from the problem and blame you: if you paid more you would have
fast service. Totally ignore any network maintenance that's underway. I've lost days over this.
Do I get credited for lousy service? No.

It's on my agenda to downsize my online activities and use public computers. This is a fleecing.

17 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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TexasTowelie

(111,277 posts)
1. I've been having problems with Firefox for the last few days also.
Fri Jul 7, 2017, 02:46 PM
Jul 2017

It consumes a lot of RAM when I have it open and there are some Websites that run a lot of scripts that bog it down. Gannett newspaper sites are some of the worst because they want to autoplay the same video or show the same popups on nearly every story that they publish.

katmondoo

(6,454 posts)
2. I always had a problem with firefox
Fri Jul 7, 2017, 02:57 PM
Jul 2017

Printing pictures was the worse, had to sign back on to Explorer to print. I see nothing of value on the PC with using Firefox

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
3. Most of my problems are solved but but but
Wed Jul 19, 2017, 06:02 PM
Jul 2017

Yahoo email goes into an infinite loop asking for logins, by pass it and it's fine

and my bank will not login at all, their tech support is supposed to take it up tomorrow.

The login just hangs for hours on a blank tab, nothing else happens.

There were slowdowns in Philly for me anyway around the 5th, when Verizone said they
cut an optic cable. I wonder if it was just an excuse for upgrades in progress.

But now the problems continue.

"out of memory" on Opera browser sometimes

Lots of "internet connection failed" "Retry?" pages, but on 2nd try they go through fine

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)
4. I don't use firefox, it messes up my IE & PCs. You're right about verizon, they fleece you. I had go
Thu Jul 20, 2017, 10:37 AM
Jul 2017

I had good luck with every time my internet was 'slow', taking forever to reload calling the teckie help and log a complaint.

I know its a PITA to wait on hold and put in a service call because they do the same un power modem routine. But then you tell the tech "how do I get a credit on my bill for this 'outage''? They'll say contact billing. Also ask the tech for a call back when the issue is resolved. sometimes a higher-up tech calls and you have a number of a real human IT person to question about your connection problem.

Contact billing and demand your credit. They'll give you like $1.00. If you do this 5 or 6 times (keep a record of every time you have a 'connection problem') you'll get a bit of credits and much better service. Be friendly and ask billing, "do you know of any internet services you can recommend that don't have this problem?"

good luck, it is frustrating to have connection problems.

Another suggestion is to test your computer OFFLINE (unplug modem) and see if computer is just slow loading without internet.
If wifi- wire connection to modem.

When you unpower modem, turn off your computer and wait about 20 mins, power computer first.

test computer page loading/program loading- offline,

Then power up modem and it may use a faster connection-less throttling by verizons shitty internet.

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
5. This is what's happening
Thu Jul 20, 2017, 10:57 AM
Jul 2017

Last edited Thu Jul 20, 2017, 02:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Taken me days to diagnose, but anything local to Philly area is pretty fast.
Any sites in western Canada or Europe are very fast.

Anything financial in areas outside Philly - Atlanta, Washington, West Coast
is very slow, often just hangs for an hour or more, or is simply totally unavailable.
NONE of this happens at 7 am. It all occurs after 9 am through 5 pm. Evenings are
pretty normal.

So when eTrade did a traceroute 2.5 weeks ago and told me it all stops west of Philly,
they were right. There is a bottleneck. Something is out of service.

So they are doing something - upgrading, rerouting, operating at reduced bandwidth to
faciliate such. I can't even get through to Verizon tech support. Today the connection
to digital support - the voice person on Verizon? - was fuzzy. They couldn't even understand
me.

all I get from Verizon is Upsell

I'd be calling them 5 times a day

I plan to accelerate my online business and get it done over the next 6-12 months
because I'm getting off Verizon at some point. I can go get public Wifi twice a week.

They blame it on me or just ignore it. That's why tech support is in Asia. No accountability.
Not even domestic wire fraud!

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)
6. I feel your pain! can get two hours of XFINITY WiFi free, once a month.
Thu Jul 20, 2017, 03:32 PM
Jul 2017

disconnect from your internet and open wifi and read down the list, XFINITY may be in the wifi list.click it and it should offer you two hours free.

If my internets down I look at that list and sometimes people don't have locked wifi (wink)

XFINITY will show up in my list- if you aren't connected to any internet. At least in Houston area it is. They had a decent connection when I used it a couple months ago. Even their monthly/daily fees weren't to expensive.

Good luck! It's hard to start an online business without decent internet!

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
7. Some improvement now with cache clearing
Thu Jul 20, 2017, 03:34 PM
Jul 2017

I did clear the cache 2 days ago, from the firefox drop down box. Didn't help.

eTrade had me clear the login and password cache, from the 3 bar tool bar dropdown menu.
This worked pretty well.

Then there is a separate cache in etrade Pro, on login.

So to my way of looking at this, there are 3 separate caches that are supposed to be all the same cache.

And Verizon last week took control of my desktop and deleted 340MB of local app data ... i thought that
was cache and cookies too.

Life would be a lot easier if somebody would tell you that you have to do these things.

How was I to know?

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
8. Actually it's pretty slow and pretty bad
Mon Jul 24, 2017, 08:02 PM
Jul 2017

I did PC maintenance all day. Removed software, including FireFox, AVG, and some extraneous
stuff. Defragged, scanned for viruses. Ran some IPCONFIG diagnostics. I do not have a problem
between my PC and my router, wireless or wired. But why can't all sites connect? Why some take
35 minutes or hours, while others delay a minute and others are a second or two? Even now on DU -
click a link once and it hangs for minutes, click it again and it's instant. What is happening?

Verizon does nothing except tell me I need faster speed. Last time they told me it was stock market
charting software that was too large. Today I didn't run it, which didn't improve the speed or access.
I get occasional access to each site, then intermittent non-access. Anything financial can't connect
- banks and the like.

Right now DU is speedy. Rare. It was intermittent most of the day. eBay is almost always very good, it
never fails to load. Sometimes it won't load thumbnails. etrade took 30+ minutes to load the first page, and
this is at 7:30 PM when there is no traffic on the site! DU hangs for 5 or so minutes at a time.

Today one site told me it could be incompatible drivers, Vista. How would I know?

So as a tool of diagnosis, I plan to install Linux Mint as a dual boot and see if that can access the internet.

This is getting to be ridiculous. It's been going on since July 1. Three weeks of frustrating pain. Called the public
utility commission, but they won't do much, just refer it to Verizon.

It is very near time to give up the internet. But what a pain, no info flow, no ebay income, no employment sites,
nothing!

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
9. I think the days of slow internet are over
Wed Aug 2, 2017, 08:52 PM
Aug 2017

Does the IT department really know what's going on? I doubt it.

I think there were ISP upgrades, major upgrades, that slowed things down.
I think I have a local 1-3PM disconnect problem in some routers near my location.
I think some services block others, while warnings are innaccurate. They told us
Vista obsolescence meant "security vulnerabilities" and FireFox said they supported
Vista until September. They didn't say June, they didn't say locked up.

I had few problems today, even while running 3 browsers, total 15 tabs, plus eTrade Pro.
Moving Yahoo from FireFox to Lunascape ended hung tabs almost entirely. I had a few on
Craigslist today.

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
10. What do you do when Verizon is simply unreliable?
Fri Aug 4, 2017, 07:41 PM
Aug 2017

Each day about 1:39 PM I lose connection to the internet. Disconnects will continue for almost
2 hours or thereabout. The problem returns early evening.

Windows reads it as 'repair internet connection' problem, but then can't do anything because
it cannot contact Microsoft 1.1.1.1

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
11. I think it's coming down to proxy settings
Tue Aug 8, 2017, 12:28 PM
Aug 2017

Today, Firefox is working wonderfully well. It uses "use system proxy settings".

Opera has no such choice. It's auto-detect or configure your own.
eTrade the same, auto-detect or specify, and it asks every bootup.

Lunascape is working fine and has no proxy choices, so it's auto-detect or system.

And that default is set in Internet Explorer, and it is auto-detect. So why won't Opera
pick up on that?

ucrdem

(15,512 posts)
12. bucolic have you thought about switching to Opera full-time?
Tue Aug 8, 2017, 11:20 PM
Aug 2017

There were a couple of things it didn't used to be able to do right after they upgraded (print to PDF for example) but I can't think of anything it can't do now. It also has a built-in ad-blocker. You can import your Firefox bookmarks as an html file, and you can synch Opera across several devices, or use it on someone else's machine, just like Chrome. But it sounds like Firefox might be bogging down your system, which is why I stopped using it a few years back.

p.s. there's a proxy setting under Privacy and Security / VPN

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
13. Thanks for the idea
Wed Aug 9, 2017, 05:52 AM
Aug 2017

Two days ago Opera was the only thing working, now it's the slowest browser, not sure why yet.

Yesterday I ran RogueKiller, an alt anti-virus program, and it cleaned out some junk. Then I
chased down some unable to load pages and found a recommendation to delete "cert8" file.

Since then the PC's been running very well, but it's only 24 hours.

Curiously, in addtion to LAN, my router is showing an active WLAN too.
I still think Verizon is tweaking, because last night while my download speed
was usual for HiSpeed 1.0, at about .7 which is good, my UPLOAD speed
was 1.24, which is unheard of, and it is usually about .2 -.3.

I plan to add Linux Mint one of these weekends. And know there's a Windows 10 in my future.

THANKS for the support!

ucrdem

(15,512 posts)
14. 10 is a good idea and will solve a lot of problems.
Wed Aug 9, 2017, 08:53 AM
Aug 2017

It works on most Vista-era PCs, and if you have room on your hard drive, you can put it in a new partition and keep your Vista setup intact, in case you have software that won't run on newer equipment. Another approach if you can spare the cash is to get a second PC. You can can get an entire 64-bit Win 10 Pro system for $149, less than the cost of a stand-alone 10 Pro license ($199):


HP 6200 Desktop Computer Refurbished; Intel Core i3-2100 Processor 3.1GHz; Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 4GB DDR3 RAM; 500GB Hard Drive: $149.99


http://www.microcenter.com/product/476898/6200_Desktop_Computer_Refurbished

talk about pennies on the dollar!

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
15. Thanks twice in the same day!
Wed Aug 9, 2017, 09:13 PM
Aug 2017

I'll be going the laptop route. I just learned today that eTrade Pro will b obsolete this weekend, they are replacing it with Options House. So maybe there were some real problems in there for me with the aging software.

I'm pretty sure I'll be adding Linux Mint to this PC to try to prove that my ISP, internet connection, DSL, are all viable before I tool up with more hardware. I have my doubts because it drops the connection 10 times a day, mostly in the afternoon 1:40 to 5, and maybe 7 to 9. If it's not reliable, I can trade by charts once a week at the library, no sense in paying for such poor performance. Copper wires, end of the line remote location, the phone companies aren't going to invest beans in that.

If all goes well I'll bump up the RAM to at least 6GB, I run a lot of tabs.

ucrdem

(15,512 posts)
16. hey good luck.
Thu Aug 10, 2017, 07:02 PM
Aug 2017

Here's what happened here: Verizon sold their landline business to Frontier and it went from mediocre to crappy fast. I have a landline that I keep for emergencies and it started having outages for days at a time, taking my Earthlink DSL with it. Sometimes I could get confirmation using a cell phone, sometimes I couldn't. Basically it sucked. After a few weeks of no DSL last spring I called TWC and they came out and ran a wire into my house through a window and now I have $44/mo cable internet, which is better than Earthink/Verizon and includes a router-modem I have to rent for a year. TWC is now called Spectrum. Anyway the point is that Verizon DSL was bad and Frontier is worse so I also feel your pain!

bucolic_frolic

(42,651 posts)
17. Just to clarify some things that were not accurately told to me
Mon Aug 14, 2017, 04:32 PM
Aug 2017

Etrade is not ditching Pro. It is still available. They are launching OptionsHouse software, which is more
online based than downloaded.

Their representatives did tell me last week Pro was history. Now OptionsHouse has been delayed though
available for some users.

I didn't want to contribute to eTrade's confusion so I posted these corrections.

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