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Dell XPS 13 - Computer slows down when downloading via Wifi
Hi,
I have a new XPS 13 laptop and all has been working well with it until I noticed a few issues over past few days.
When I stream either music or video from another PC I get a clicking sound in the audio every few seconds. In addition if Im streaming video the PC seems to start running very slowly.
I then decided to copy the movie across to the desktop and run from there, whilst the file was copying the laptop slowed down incredibly, trying to move mouse was very laggy and it continued to move 10-20 seconds after I stopped. Laptop was pretty much unusable until the file had been copied.
I wondered it if was a hard disk issue so then copied and pasted the file on the desktop but it did it without issue.
So it therefore seems that when using wifi the laptop has some sort of bottleneck.
Any ideas what may be causing this ?
TIA
faizalenu
193 Posts
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December 4th, 2012 06:00
Well, disk I/O is the slowest thing on your computer.
Run diags to prove it is not the hard drive. Also, a defragmented hard drive can cause exactly the same issues on a good drive.
Jam_Man
7 Posts
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December 4th, 2012 06:00
PS its a brand new laptop, doubt its fragmented as Ive barely used it.
Jam_Man
7 Posts
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December 4th, 2012 06:00
But why would it only happen when downloading over wifi when the wifi is relatively slow?
When I did a copy/paste of a 1.2gb file from desktop to desktop there was no performance issue at all and the disk would be far more active?
Jam_Man
7 Posts
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December 4th, 2012 11:00
More information:
Just started a download of ubuntu (around 700mb) then tried to watch a movie file, 1.2gb (saved on desktop).
laptop started stuttering and video wouldnt play correctly Disk usage at the time was minimal.
As soon as I disabled wifi it sprang into life.
I then tried copying a 1.2gg file from a usb stick to laptop and no problems at all.
The problem seems to occur when Im moving data over the wifi connection the laptop keels over.
faizalenu
193 Posts
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December 6th, 2012 05:00
Don't try to move gigs of info over wifi -- that is just dumb.
faizalenu
193 Posts
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December 6th, 2012 05:00
Oh, well wifi is going to the the bottleneck. Typical wifi speed max out at 54 Mb/s -- and are typically really much less than that. Wired speeds are min 100 Mb/s and even as high as 1Gb/s. Definitely going to affect streaming.
Jam_Man
7 Posts
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December 7th, 2012 00:00
Please read my comments. Im not complaining aboujt wifi speed. When I use wifi my laptop freezes up and the mouse barely moves.
For example, If I wanted to watch a movie I had saved on my desktop and download a 100mb file the movie starts spluttering.
This does not happen on any other machine I have, including a less powerful and much older Asus I use every day for work.
Jam_Man
7 Posts
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December 7th, 2012 00:00
Again read my comments, this isnt about moving gigs fo data, its about using wifi to download a 700mb file causing the laptop to start to freeze.
Even if I was trying to download a 100mb file it would cause the laptop to start seizing up, thats not normal.
Thanks for your reply though, really helpful.