Slowdown

johnbrooks · Post by **johnbrooks** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 4:57 pm

For the past couple of days the site and forums have been achingly slow. Over three and a half minutes (on broadband) to load the first page and then there are numerous missing pictures. Nearly every link results in "page cannot be displayed" until I refresh.

Is it just me? Could it be something to do with XP SP2? - but I haven't found any other sites affected.

Anybody else having trouble?

John

Post by **martinhodgson** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 5:02 pm

Nope, normal here

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 6:58 pm

all ok here too, but im staying well away from sp2 for a couple of months. Might be the old Avenue A thingy causing problems again. I had one day earlier this week where i had to hit refresh 6 times to get the front page to load.

kreader · Post by **kreader** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 7:59 pm

Just taken delivery of new computer and SP2 is already on it. So I don't have any choice. No problems so far and site running alright for me.

Package includes 17" TFT monitor. Got MSTS up and running today and loaded London Brighton again. Wow! I am seeing loads of stuff, signs I can read, Traffic that I have never seen before. The detail on the trains is remarkable.
Specification is similar to that recommended by Matt. Express version. I have the same graphics card.

Does any one know how I can transfer over all my Trains that I have still got on my old computer or do I have to unzip and load each one separately?

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:12 pm

Hi
Yes I've noticed some very pronounced stutters over the last few days...I find anything off the album painfully slow....but I have to say not just on this site....so I was blaming NTL.

johnbrooks · Post by **johnbrooks** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:46 pm

Lad491 wrote:all ok here too, but im staying well away from sp2 for a couple of months. Might be the old Avenue A thingy causing problems again. I had one day earlier this week where i had to hit refresh 6 times to get the front page to load.

What is the "old Avenue A thingy"??

(Had to hit refresh 3 times to post this!)

John

thenudehamster · Post by **thenudehamster** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:02 pm

You could do a search for it here - it's a spyware thingy, I think Matt said; there is a thread on it somewhere in here (but it never affected me so I didn't take a lot of notice......)

comrades · Post by **comrades** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:14 pm

for my the download server has been dodgy. im a premium member, and half the files wont download. it just sits there on xx%, or wont even start the download window.

Post by **NeutronIC** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 9:43 am

Avenue-A is just a cookie, no way that it can cause a computer problems

The server has been having some problems over the last few days with it getting seriously bogged down so i'm going to keep an eye on things and see if I can find out why.

Matt.

Fodda · Post by **Fodda** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:55 pm

When I got my new pooter I did an install of MSTS, upgrades, and utilities, RR, ConBuilder TrainStore etc etc... Then I just copied the whole TrainSet folder, Sounds, Global and a few other folders straight onto the new installation. Still works.

Stooopidperson · Post by **Stooopidperson** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:44 pm

Seems slow for me on loading the main page and some pages of forums...

johnbrooks · Post by **johnbrooks** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:02 pm

The slowdown definitely seems to be connected to my computer - probably SP2. I've just tried loading the site from my son's W98 machine which uses the same broadband connection as mine and everything went like lightning as usual.

The REALLY strange thing is that it only seem to affect UKtrainsim and Atomic Forums - and the forums only if I go there via the main site - if I click the link in a topic reply notification it's much quicker. I've just spent a couple of hours surfing and can't find another site which is affected - even shopping catalogue sites with vast numbers of pictures load in a couple of seconds.

Matt - is there anything extra special or unusual about the UKtrainsim site which could cause this behaviour? It's taking 2 mins to show anything other than the main header, then another 1.5 mins to load all the items, still leaving a dozen or so "red Xs"

John

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:05 pm

It's taking 2 mins to show anything other than the main header, then another 1.5 mins to load all the items, still leaving a dozen or so "red Xs"

Are you using the new SP2 firewall. Its been known to cause lots of problems, escpecially if used in conjunction with another firewall.

try turning it off and see if that makes any difference.

johnbrooks · Post by **johnbrooks** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:08 pm

No - I'm using Zone Alarm with the XP firewall turned off.

John

Post by **NeutronIC** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:53 pm

With the myriad of possible software and all the implications of any of their loads of options it's almost impossible to tell what might be causing problems. There's nothing but plain HTML on the site, I don't even use style sheets or anything fancy like that - but loading the front page of the site can be quite a few hits to the server so it might be some 'cost' of doing one request that is worse on UKTS because of the large number of requests for that one page.

Perhaps Zone Alarm is doing live web page monitoring and all requests are going through that and being scanned for virii etc - I'll say what I normally say, switch everything you can figure out how to off, if that fixes it, start switching back on bit by bit until it slows down again.

Matt.