Category: Random Fix

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Weird WAN speed issues with my workstation

I’m having some of the strangest issues with my workstations.  Here are the specs:

ASUS Rampage V Extreme
Intel Core i7 5820K @ 3.30GHz
Corsair Dominator Platinum 64 GB
Samsung EVO NVMe 500GB solid state drive
Seasonic 1000W PSU

I recently upgraded to gigabit Internet with Spectrum Business.  I initially was seeing horrible speeds, anywhere from 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps.  I finally hooked my 15″ Mid 2015 MacBook Pro up with Lightning to Ethernet adapter and plugged directly into the modem.  I can see my connection is NOT the problem.  I see anywhere from 800 Mbps to 1.3 Gbps on the MacBook, CONSISTENTLY.  This is the mind-boggling part.

Now we go back to my Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit workstation.  I was on 1803 and updated to 1809 last night.

I consistently see speeds being gimped from the gigabit I should be getting to around 100-300 Mbps which is pissing me off.  I know that something is using up my network resources and or is doing some traffic shaping.  I’ve tried a clean boot, but some programs don’t adhere to a clean boot and keep running anyway.  I wish I could do a clean install but don’t have that kind of time anymore.  I may look into installing Windows onto one of the various spare PCs I have lying around the house but, procrastination and stuff.

In the meantime, I’d like to put this out there and if anyone else has seen their speed test speeds being gimped but clearly know that it’s working properly because they hooked up another device, whether it’s a Mac or another PC with a different OS or a clean install with no other applications running, let me know.

Something is gimping the connection.  I have disabled the firewall, antivirus, and any other programs that I can think of that would use the WAN link heavily.  I sometimes can see gigabit speeds through fast.com and speedtest.net, but it’s not consistent.  I know some people might be thinking well, there are peak hours and other various explanations, but that does not explain why my MacBook Pro can consistently, and I mean at any time of the day, do speed tests out to fast.com and speedtest.net’s various servers and see close to if not gigabit speeds!

I found a blog that suggested running TCP Optimizer from https://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php.  I ran it, and so far I see consistent gigabit speeds.  I will continue testing throughout the day and will report back if it’s a permanent thing.

Edit: 12/16/2018:

Well, I can confirm that the TCP Optimizer has fixed my issues.  If you see weird slowdowns on your WAN connection as though something is throttling your speed, check out the TCP Optimizer.  I ran it, changed the settings to optimal and restarted.  It’s been about a full 24 hours and no problems to report.  I’m seeing the full 1 Gbps connection being used on all speed tests.

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Windows 10 Photos app printing problem: Your printer has experienced an unexpected configuration problem. 0x800706b5

I ran into this problem with a client’s computer.  A brand new Dell OptiPlex 7050 with a NVMe solid state drive.  Trying to print a simple .jpg picture would allow the default printer to come up in the settings box but trying to select a secondary printer would cause this error to come up.  I tried uninstalling the printer and reinstalling it.  The only time I had success was by utilizing the PS driver for the printer.  The printer in question is a Ricoh C3003 MFP.  After uninstalling and reinstalling it a third time it resulted in ALL printers just saying Connecting…  Restarting the print spooler service and changing the driver did not help.  I finally found something on Google that said it’s easier to just right click the .jpg and click on print as it will bring up an entirely different program to print the picture.  Windows 10 and its what I call “tablet” apps aren’t the greatest.  I find them to be extremely buggy and more often than not, I never find an actual fix for the problem.  I always have to find a workaround, which, unfortunately, is quite sad.

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Windows 10 random computer and mouse stuttering

System specs:

ASUS Rampage V Extreme 3.1
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400MHz 64GB kit
Intel Core i7-5820K CPU not overclocked
EVGA nVidia 1070
Seasonic PSU (don’t know the exact model off hand)
Samsung EVO 870 NVME PCIe 500GB SSD
Samsung 850 500GB x2 in RAID0 using Intel RAID Controller
SanDisk 960GB SSD plugged into Intel Controller
Corsair K95 RGB keyboard with Cherry-MX Red switches
Logitech G700s using Logitech Gaming Software version 9.2

I have been fighting with trying to find the root cause of this issue where my mouse cursor will suddenly start stuttering and lagging as you move it around the screen.  The entire computer starts to lag as well including watching video and audio.  I thought I had it narrowed down to either some kind of USB issue with my motherboard (ASUS Rampage V Extreme.  I’m not so sure now.  When it starts is completely random.  I can get task manager to open, but there isn’t any process that can be seen using up system resources to the point that it would make my system lag.

It just happened about five minutes ago while I was browsing Outlook and also Google Chrome.  I had a ton of stuff open, but I have 64 GB of memory and an NVME Samsung EVO PCIe SSD.  I opened task manager and could not see anything out of the ordinary except for Google Chrome 64-Bit using around 4 GB of memory.  But again, I have 64 GB, and 4 GB shouldn’t even make a dent on that amount of available memory plus the added PCIe NVME SSD.

I started to ALT+F4 all the windows that were open and surprisingly after I got through all the windows the mouse lag/stutter stopped.  I can’t say for sure which program that was closed caused it to stop the stuttering.  The next time it happens, I will try to go slower and kill each window one by one until the mouse stutter stops.

I also have a Logitech mouse and have seen this weird issue when you use Windows faster user switching and have two people logged, and the lcore.exe process is running within two user’s accounts.  But I don’t think it’s related to the lcore.exe process because I’ve had a hotkey to kill the process while it was happening and it did not cause the stuttering to stop.

Feel free to comment below if you have the same problem.

11/06/2018 Update:

I seem to have narrowed it down to possibly being VMWare Workstation’s USB driver that is causing this to occur.  I can’t say 100% certainty, but I’m very close.  I’ll keep working on this and will update the post as time goes on.

11/07/2018 Update:

Doesn’t appear to be related to VMWare Workstation.  Tonight I found that my workstation at my office is doing the same thing.  It seems like it happens after the computer has been on for a few days with no reboot.  I could easily reproduce the issue by opening task manager while Chrome was open.  I did this at home and left it while I went out for a bit and came back, and the mouse was still lagging/stuttering/freezing/jumping around the screen.

I’m not any closer to fixing this, but I did go ahead and disable pretty much everything that isn’t necessary and am trying to reproduce the issue again.  I might have to wait a few days before it shows itself again which is infuriating.

11/8/2018 Update:

I disable the vast majority of the software that starts on my computer and started opening up hundreds of tabs within Chrome.  I’ve got Chrome using up around 5GB of memory right now.  Another thing I did uninstall completely was Grammarly.  Grammarly latches on to everything as it tries to check your grammar so it makes sense that it might cause a lot of problems like this, but I can’t find anyone else online or through my Google-Fu that had a similar problem, so it’s likely not that.

I won’t know until I probably leave the computer on for a few days as it appears to clear up after a reboot.

4/8/2019 Update:

Unfortunately, I am still fighting with this issue. I have tried so many things to no avail. Just today, things started to freeze up completely, and it would unfreeze every few minutes. I tried opening up Task Manager and tried killing processes, but that did not help either. I thought for a while that it was related to my SSD setup and I might be getting closer to figuring this thing out. I have a new Samsung 970 EVO NVMe 500 GB drive that I installed and disconnected all other SATA SSD hard drives. For a time, things were OK. Not completely fixed, but not as bad. I attributed that to my SATA SSD hard drives failing or at least one of them that were connected. I cannot do a diagnostic on them as they’re both NFR OEM/enterprise SSD drives and Samsung Magic does not recognize them.

In any case, I am a bit bothered by how crappy my system performed. It was top of the line for when it was purchased, and I have never gone above all programs using more than fifty percent of my available memory, which is 64 GB worth.

At this point, I am thinking about buying a new motherboard, PSU and CPU and re-using my memory and video card. If that doesn’t fix it, then I guess I may be pushing my system to its limits, which I highly doubt.

This problem typically rears its head when I have had a ton of programs open along with the uptime being anywhere from one to five days without a reboot.

Within the past two weeks, I have started to experience weird freezing that occurs for a minute or two and then releases the computer, and I can do whatever it is I was doing. I have opened up the Task Manager and could see my network process using up 200+Mbps. I updated my NIC’s driver and sure enough, it sort of fixed the issue.

As of 4/8, I have once again, disabled any unnecessary startup items and disabled all non-Microsoft services to try and see how long it will take before the problem returns.

I will keep you posted.