slow internet

[Dragon Bear]

Hi there. I have Blueyonder Broadband 256k. But lately it's been acting like 56k Dial up. I did the online speed test and it showed up as only slightly above 56k. So I rang up their customer service and he told me to do something in Dos to check how ports were open. As expected loads of ports were in fact open, so he said it was spyware. He introduced me to your site (which is fabulous by the way) and I downloaded Spybot and Ad-adware. That got rid of loads of stuff that I had no idea about. So I thought that was all sorted. However the ports are still open and the connection still slow. So can you fathom what's going on because there is no spyware or adware left and there aren't any viruses either. Very grateful for your assistance and your great site!!

[NHH]

Hi...

Spyware generally doesn't cause many connections to be active.
To check how many network connections you've currently got open click the Start button, click Run, type cmd in the box and in the command prompt window type netstat -a..... if you've got approx. 30+ connections listed, you've either got a P2P file sharing program running or your PC is infected with a worm or email virus.
Also typing netstat -b in the command prompt shows you which program has each connection open.

Try scanning your PC with the Housecall online virus scanner, which can be launched from Nethomehelp's front page.
Tip: If using Windows XP, disable 'system restore' before virus scanning your PC.

[Georgina]

Thank you for your advice!! I did what you said and I found 9 TCP connections and 13 UDP. All the UDPs just had little hash things next to them so I assume they're not a problem. The TCPs are all open because of MSN Messenger!! I don't quite understand why it needs that many connections, but it doesn't seem to be harming my computer just slowing the internet down a bit. Oh well. Thank you though so much for your help!! At least I know what to do in the future.

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