Download Problem

[Dan Gould]

I have no idea if anyone would have any clue on what would be causing this, but for the last several days I have had a strange problem: When I download from Rapidshare (or megaupload) my download freezes in the middle after a few minutes. I'm using Firefox, and the download manager will show that the download is active but the number of bytes downloaded stops going up. I get the same thing on live streams, like youtube. I haven't been able to watch a youtube video to the end, it doesn't stream into cache all the way through, and eventually it stops because nothing else has downloaded.

Memory is not a problem, I've got 20 GB available.

One thing I haven't tried is to download something from Dime, just to see if it goes all the way through.

It doesn't appear to be a Firefox thing, I just tried to download using IE and its also stopped halfway through.

[JSngry]

Check w/your IPS. It might be their issue.

[Drew Peacock]

You have 20 gig of RAM? Do you mind me asking why?

[Dan Gould]

You have 20 gig of RAM? Do you mind me asking why?

Its 504 MB of RAM. 114 GB of space on the hard drive (20 GB left).

I referred to the latter to indicate that there is enough space available to download a large file successfully.

Edited June 17, 2009 by Dan Gould

[JSngry]

ISPs will ration your bandwidth at any given moment unless you're paying for a more premium package, and even then...

Try downloading a succession of smaller files and see if the problem persists.

[Dan Gould]

This has never been an issue before - we actually pay for the second tier of DSL speed. And its not a restriction on speed, its the download freezing and never resuming, which doesn't strike me as ISP issue but then again I know little of which I speak.

[JSngry]

I've had similar issues over the years (not lately, not w/FIOS). What I think happens is that the DL gets gets momentarily "diverted & then never gets put back on track again. Eventually it times out.

Either that or your modem/network card/whatever is buggin'. That can produce the same results.

But if you're dpoing DSL, you're still using the telephone wires, and with traffic what it is these days, hey...

Then again, all I know is what ISP techs have told me over the years, and if they really knew how to fix stuff, I'd probably not be on FIOS right now...

[Dan Gould]

Sometimes it's good to shut off your router for a couple of minutes and restart it.

Often, this will take care of the problem. DSL can just be flaky like that sometimes.

In contradistinction to Drew's question, why do you only have 504 MB of RAM

(a number BTW, that seems, itself, rather odd - in other words: what's your configuration if you don't mind my asking?)

Sorry but that's about the limit of my understanding - I just right clicked on My Computer and chose properties.

But thanks on the router suggestion, I'll try that. We have had a couple of occasions where that was necessary to get back online even though all the proper lights were lit up.

[Dan Gould]

OK, that's fine - just curious. It seemed like a very small amount of RAM,

but if you're not producing Britney Spear's next disc, then you're probably set!

(I'm not producing it either, but I like 32GB of RAM).

Well its something I should be looking at because if I am not mistaken, its RAM that the processor accesses to do its job, so a high speed processor that gets bogged down easily probably means that a big boost in RAM would help change that.

[.:.impossible]

OK, that's fine - just curious. It seemed like a very small amount of RAM,

but if you're not producing Britney Spear's next disc, then you're probably set!

(I'm not producing it either, but I like 32GB of RAM).

32GB! That is seriously impressive. DD3? Mac Pro? What software are you using? Sorry to geek out, but DAMN!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

OK, that's fine - just curious. It seemed like a very small amount of RAM,

but if you're not producing Britney Spear's next disc, then you're probably set!

(I'm not producing it either, but I like 32GB of RAM).

Not many PCs support more than 4 GBs of RAM and if you're running Windows XP, it won't let you do much with anything over 2 GBs.

Rule of thumb is Windows XP, 2 GB RAM - Windows Vista, 4 GB RAM.

BTW, for Dan's case, 504 MB of RAM is not enough and it is a very unusual number which makes me wonder how it got there.

Also, having only 20 GB of space on a 114 GB hardrive (another weird number) means that it is getting rather full. I would recommend getting an external hardrive and getting a lot of that stuff off your main drive to make it run faster.

Lastly, you should consider de-fragging that drive, however, be warned that de-fragging almost 100 GBs of stored data will take a very long time.

Kevin

[Dan Gould]

We bought it off the shelf at Sam's, as I recall it was labeled as specially configured for "media" or something like that so we figured between my VO recording and LP transfers and Dime downloads this was a good choice. Nothing has been changed so the hard drive space and the RAM are exactly as it was installed originally.

We do have an external hard drive - my audio/video folder currently contains 77 GBs that I could certainly move off the hard drive.

[Dan Gould]

I turned off the modem for five minutes but there's no change - about 1 minute of a download, then it freezes, no further progress on the file and that's that.

[Dan Gould]

Well, I think you're at that point where you may be hitting that wall.

Everything that Kevin said in his post is wise and you should consider.

®

I'll definitely consider adding RAM and clearing space on the hard drive but that's related to performance/speed and I don't see how it would effect downloads that stop in the middle and never complete.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

DSL modems do die on occasion. I know several people who had connection problems and it took a new modem to fix it. The ISP could also send a reset commend to it. Sometimes it just gets bunged up.

Also, is this computer connected to the DSL modem directly or are you connected through a router or wireless network? If you have a direct connection, how is it made? On some DSL modems, you have the choice of USB or ethernet. Ethernet is faster.

Kevin

[BERIGAN]

Dan, if nothing else, you could try a program like http://getright.com/ to continue a paused download.

I am strictly a layperson with computers also, but I do know I have read through the years, that once you get down to 20% or less of space left on a harddrive you will have problems.

You have XP?? Half a gig, wouldn't be enough for Vista.

You can just burn stuff on discs too, cheaper than another external harddrive.

[Dan Gould]

Its clear that the configuration/memory/whatever of the PC has nothing to do with this download problem - I used my wife's laptop (wireless connection) to test and once again, everything freezes within a minute or less and never resumes.

I am calling Comcast to see what they may do/suggest.

[papsrus]

Its clear that the configuration/memory/whatever of the PC has nothing to do with this download problem - I used my wife's laptop (wireless connection) to test and once again, everything freezes within a minute or less and never resumes.

I am calling Comcast to see what they may do/suggest.

Don't know about their internet services, but Comcast in general blows, IMHO. I wouldn't be surprised if they were squeezing bandwidth on you. If so, you'll probably not get a straight answer out of whomever happens to pick up (or not!) their phone. ... Would be interested to hear what they tell you though.

Have you tried picking up a wireless network in your area and testing the download that way?

[Dan Gould]

When I recruited my wife into this situation, she went in whole hog. She spent a while on the phone with Comcast (they've actually been helpful in the past) and they went through a shitload of technical settings with her, none of which changed anything. Now a higher level tech is supposed to call back, and of course its over an hour when they said it would be 15-20 minutes. Definitely not an issue of broadband restriction - my wife now realizes that she seems to have the same problem in her office where she says she had the same problem with youtube - it streams and plays to a certain point, then quits, just like the file downloads proceed to a certain extent and then stop.

[Dan Gould]

Well this gets more annoying and confusing. Turns out the first tech was an f-ing moron, neglecting to update our phone number when my wife gave it to her (so they couldn't reach us when they called us back since the number was disconnected when we dropped the landline when we switched to Comcast from AT&T), and entering "email problem" on the work ticket. On the other hand, the second tech was a tad smarter as she actually went to Small's website and found that their archive would do the same thing to her - play for a short period then stop. I don't think she went to youtube or megaupload to download but they are getting to work on the issue and are supposed to call back before my wife goes to visit Mom or else on Monday morning.

[Dan Gould]

Well ... my wife went and looked at the router settings, changed the security settings ... and everything seems to work. The Small's archive recordings don't cut off in the middle, and I managed a download from megaupload. Rapidshare is working kind of weird - it looks like it is stopping but then it resumes, and its definitely not freezing as quickly as it did before.

What's strange is why things would get messed up without any appparent changes to anything, then get fixed by changing something that hadn't changed in the first place.