Forum lagging

Pinch his laptop for a bit and log on as yourself - you can log on to GC on more than one machine at a time

 

Do you have, and use, CC Cleaner??, Sheal, and/or use any program to optimise your computer after you've used it??

 

One step at a time @Sheal - it need not necessarily be terminal, but it might need a wee bit of thought to work around the problems

What is your laptop make and model?

What operating system are you using (presumably it is Windows, but what version?)

The wifi dropping out, or performing poorly is relatively common (Toshiba & HP especially so) - the hardware that they put into a laptop is pretty much as cheap as it can be, and is crammed into a relatively tight space with plenty of heat being chucked at it. A potential cure is to go for a wifi dongle, which are anything from £10 upwards, depending on what you want.

As both laptops are occasionally having issues, it could be your router - sadly, the only sure fire way I know of proving that is to swap the router with a new one, or at least with one that is known to be fit and healthy.

The freezing and then the machine gun fire sounds like the processor is momentarily hanging - my Vaio was doing this, and it turned out to be the display driver that had a bug; install a new driver, and it seems to be fine so far. However, if your broadband/wifi isn't working properly, this could give the same symptoms.

What you have to bear in mind is that there is more to any signal (be it wifi, radio or TV) than just the strength - the quality of the signal is as important, if not more important than just the strength. Think of it like a radio - if you have it up loud (good strength) and have a nice clean signal, you can hear all the lyrics to your favourite tunes; if the signal is poor, you get loads of hisses, pops and fuzz - no matter how loud you turn it up, you still aren't going to be able to hear those lyrics.

Sadly, the 2.4Mhz band which most home routers run on is very, very crowded; most homes have wifi which spills over into neighbouring homes. Cordless telephones, bluetooth signals, microwave ovens, wireless heating controllers and thermostats can all cause problems on the 2.4Mhz band. There is now an alternative - the 5Mhz band, which isn't just as bad and has a few tricks up its sleeve to deal with signal problems; BUT, to get the 5Mhz band, you would need a new dual band router and a dual band wifi dongle.

Finally, OpenDNS

Think of it like a Yellow Pages for your PC; at the moment, you type a website address into your browser, and what you don't see is that address being looked up on a server somewhere, which then directs your request to where it needs to go. Some of these servers are a lot more reliable than others, and OpenDNS is essentially one of those that is better; to get your PC to 'ask' OpenDNS's servers to connect you to your desired websites, you need to change a couple of settings on your PC, and possibly on your router also. If you look at their website, they have a step by step guide on how to do this, and it is not as scary as it sounds

Website here

 

Acer aren't bad wee machines to be fair, and the spec. of yours looks reasonable - - the only thing that jumps out at me is the fact that it is running 3Gb of RAM, and is able to run 4Gb, which might help a wee bit, particularly as there is no dedicated graphics memory. However, that is not the reason you are having problems, and would only be a nice to have.

No harm in getting Manx Telecom to test your router - presumably they will check your line at the same time, which is no bad thing either. Before replacing it, try and borrow a router from a friend/neighbour and see if that makes any difference. If push comes to shove, I am happy to recommend some routers to look at (all of which will be TP-Link or Netgear, as they are about the best there is for domestic use in my opinion) - we can cross that bridge when you get to it though.

Also no harm holding off on the OpenDNS - again, I can help with that if you need it. I am about to go to bed (early start), but will try and PM you my email address tomorrow (remind me, as I am only one step away from senility ), and then you can get me that way if GC becomes more problematic.

You also have a 64-bit operating system on your laptop, so you could go for Waterfox, which is the 64-bit version of Firefox, which should match your machine better.

Don't hesitate to shout if you think I can help

 

An ethernet cable from the laptop straight into the back of the router will do it @Sheal, and that will eliminate the wireless side of it.

Bear in mind that testing might not necessarily prove that the router is OK or not; at work, we currently have issues somewhere on our network - - one network switch (essentially a big router) has been renewed, and things are getting worse; a few consultants have been out and cannot pin-point the problem, so the only option now is to change another network switch before heading into the realms of renewing fibre connections.

Network/IP/DNS problems can be deeply frustrating to cure, mostly due to the fact that there is nothing physical to actually 'see' what the problem is, and quite often each part will work perfectly well in isolation but put together they run like treacle.

 

I can post you a cable if it helps - I got shed loads of the things knocking about

Your son is right - don't worry about understanding technology; even the experts are thrown curve balls once in a while when technology does something that they just don't understand. I am just coming toward the end of a fairly large database build which has taken approximately 18 months to design and build - - even now, particularly with the network playing up, it will chuck up an error that I never dreamed could ever occur, and I built the thing