How to Ping?

[Case]

How do you ping your internet connection? I've recently developed a problem with my connection "stuttering" - it seems to "hang" sometimes, more frequently now, whenever I am loading a new page, then after a bit it starts to transfer data and I finally get my page. I'm on dial-up, which is slow anyway, so this is beginning to get rather frustrating . . . Just wondering if it might be with my ISP or what

[Montana]

Ping command...
http://howto.lycos.com/lycos/step/1,,26166+25551+19875,00.html
http://www.cc.vt.edu/cc/us/docs/faqlib/windows95/clients/pinginfo.html

And several optimize/troubleshooting sites...
http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-45EE-EE49CC3-398D90B6-prod1
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article04-100#5

Good luck, slow connection speeds can be difficult to remedy. ISP's likes to blame problem on bad telephone lines and of course the telephone co will deny.

[Case]

Thanks Montana - I just got a new phone line installed for my computer today, and still no improvement, so I'll see what those links yeild . . .

[Case]

Boy, do I feel a bit stupid - I found the problem - electromagnetic interference with the power cables - The phone line was twisted around the power cable. Shoulda checked the obvious first I guess.

btw, I didn't install a new line to solve this problem, I installed it cause we just had this house (modular on a foundation) built last summer, and it only had one phone jack in the kitchen, so for the past 6 months I've been unplugging the phone and running a 25 foot line into the kitchen to go online.

Also, those were good informative sites Montana, unfortunately right now the only UD computer we have online is my wifes, and it runs WinMe, which has no DOS prompt, therefore no "ping" - anybody know how to run ping in Me without DOS?

[ImaginAsian]

Its been awhile since I've used Me but can't you do Start--->Run->Command (or Cmd) and a command prompt window should open up for you to type in Ping.

Well at least that's how W2K works :)

[Case]

Thanks IA – I put Me on my wife’s computer ‘cause I think it’s a really good system for housewife’s (no comments now!:angryfire ) but I use 98-2 for my games. Still haven’t found a reason to migrate to w2k or anything with NTFS yet . . .

I’ll try that out when I get home (I’m at work all night till the wee hours of the morning) and I’ll let you know if it works. Always has bugged me that I couldn’t get a DOS prompt . . . .:growl:

[ImaginAsian]

Cool bro...lemme know if it works for ya. If not, we will figure it out :)

BTW...there are tons of reasons to migrate to 2K. Stable, fast, runs all games, NTFS, no memory leaks, no illegal memory...we have many 2k experts here and we can help ya out. Do it...you can thank us later :dir:

[Zemuss]

Do it man.. YOu will thank us later.
I switched back to Win2k. Xp is a hog for games! YUK!
Do your self a favor though. CLEAN INSTALL!

And for you house wife. DUDE treat her right and give her Win2k too. ME sucks major ass... BSOD's all the time! It also has the worst memory leaks of any system. Ever notice you load Excel but before you do your 80% free on system resources. After you load your at 50% maybe 60%. and after you close it your at 70%. Where did the other 10% go? Right out the window!

Switch its TIME TO MOVE ON WITH THE TECH AAGE!


"Z"

[lurch63]

yeah man, you are right i think its high time i throw on p-magic and put win2k on my box, not leaving 98 though for my old games, like case said. sinc. lurch

[Case]

Well, You should all be very happy for me - I just signed onto this site from a computer that doesn't have a modem. I went through my LAN to my wife's computer, and figured it all out myself! Couple of things:

1st - yes, IA, Start--->Run->Command does work on WinMe, I used it to ping, and run tracert, but to no avail. I kept getting timed out. I upgraded from IE5.5 to 6.*, and that seemed to cure the problem with my connection "hanging", as after I did that I was able to ping and run tracert. (still pathetically slow, being dialup)

2nd - I took all your good advice and reformatted my games computer to NTFS and loaded W2K Pro. It's a bit different, I must say, but I LIKE IT! Seems very Stable, and loads very quick. I'll probably end up redoing my wifes computer now.

3rd - now that I have this computer working on the internet via the network, I can download another UD client and run it on both my computers. Actually, that was the impetus for figuring this out. Thanks all for the input!

[Case]

OK, well, that didn't solve the problem. The problem was dirty lines. Not mine, the phone company's. We were on dial-up with a 25 hr/month limit, and since we were using up all the time trying to connect (plus hanging around here more!) we decided to switch to another ISP with unlimited service. Did that this morning, and the problem persisted, and then WinMe (I'm beginning to hate that OS) locked and I had to reset it and lost all my internet settings. So I called the guy up again (no, I hadn't written the settings down - they are now) and while talking to him explained what my problem was. He said to change my modem settings by adding "S12=0" into the additional setting box. He explained that that sets your modems tolerance for dirty lines, and you can set it from 0-10, with 0 being the most tolerant, and 10 won't tolerate dirty lines at all. Set it at 0, rebooted, and the problem is gone. Like magic. Zammy would be proud.

Now I'm not sure what the tradeoff is with setting it to this tolerance, it seems to work GREAT! but he said you can work it up towards 10 until it starts to degrade again, and then back off. I like this guy, Ralph from Icehouse (http://www.icehouse.net) in Boise. I need to get to know him better and pick his brains. Anyway, that was the cure.

Case . . . well, off to bed till tonight! :beer: