New
#1
AOL (ugh) taking incessantly long time to sign on & respond
Hello good Win7 people,
I have a friend who refuses to be weaned off AOL and I'm trying to help him troubleshoot a problem he's having. My friend has two Win7 desktop computers, one in LA and one in NY (he has homes in both cities) that I set up for him. They are both Dells with 4GB of RAM, Corei5 processors and Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1. The one in LA is 2 years old, about a year older than the one in NY, but otherwise they are pretty much identical in terms of the software installed on each - same antivirus, same version of Office, same AOL 9.7, same everything. He syncs documents and contacts/calendar between them so it was essential that we set them up to be as identical as possible.
The trouble is, his LA computer seems to take an interminably long time to sign on AND respond to clicking on links. In LA & NY he has TimeWarner Cable Internet with around 13-20 mbps speed in both.
At first I did the typical check for malware etc - using Avast, Malwarebytes, Ccleaner - but found nothing. Then a couple of weeks ago I suggested doing a complete clean install of Windows, so that's been done now. Formatted the drive, installed Win7 & updates, installed all his applications and restored documents etc from backup. He was in NY at the time and only just returned a few days ago, and is saying that the LA computer STILL takes an incredibly long time to load & respond to link clicks, while his NY computer does not seem to have this issue. I'm baffled since the software is identical, all updates installed on both, etc. AOL Filing Cabinet has been wiped clean too.
I am not too familiar with how AOL authentication servers work but at this point I'm wondering if it might be a factor - maybe computers signing on from his specific location in LA are authenticating off a server that's having trouble - but I'm also concerned there may be other factors to consider, such as a flaky network adapter.
Does anyone have a recommendation for other troubleshooting steps to try? Maybe I should try adding in an additional Ethernet adapter (like a USB one) to see if that resolves it, or maybe I need to adjust RWIN etc...any suggestions?