Extreme slowdown when Internet gaming - recent hardware issues

[wedgies]

I've looked over all the posts and have found some similar problems to mine but nothing that quite exactly matches it. So here goes with what has happened and hopefully someone can give me a solution.

The trouble began a few weeks ago when I had to begin powering on/off my pc with the PS's power button. The front button would no longer work. No problem until after a severe lightning storm the pc wouldn't power on at all. I check the RAM, tested voltages on the PS (they all showed good) but still nothing. Finally I ordered a new motherboard and checked everything again. Still no go so I requested a replacement chip from Intel (which they shipped very quickly and for free) and still nothing. I then began the process over again and found two bad stick of RAM (1 GB total, leaving me now with 2GB).

So now I fire up the pc and am still having to do the following to get it booted. Push the PS's power switch and then the power button on the front. Again, no problem as long as the pc works. The onboard NIC would not work. I check and see that it has no assigned MAC address. So I assign one via a registry entry, disable and then re-enable the card. Now the NIC works. I begin playing some games to test everything out (TF2 - one player only, Supreme Commander - local game) and it works fine. Then I begin playing others online and both games come to a crawl. I do several speed tests and they show a download of 1.5 Mbps and 256 up.

I have no idea what could be causing this slowdown in the online games. Could the power supply be causing this even though the voltages show normal but I'm still having to use the PS power switch? Should I do a fresh install of Windows (I did not do this when I replaced any of the hardware - chip, MB, etc.)? Could I have a bad NIC even though the speed test all show the same amount of data being passed? Any help would be appreciated and I apologize for the long post but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible. Thanks.

Wedgies

 

[CCT]

My only question is why you were using the hardware switch instead of Windows shutdown software?

 

[wedgies]

I was using the Windows shutdown but when I did the monitor would power off but the fans on the power supply would keep running. So I had to use the PS's switch for a complete shutdown.

 

[CCT]

I suspect your ACPI settings were wrong - in any event, you are NOT helping things by using hardware like that. Improper shutdown damages OS's.

 

[captaincranky]

My only question is why you were using the hardware switch instead of Windows shutdown software?

It is my understanding that a momentary touch of the computer's power switch invokes the same shutdown protocol as using the software method. A continuous press of the power switch does precipitate a hard shutdown. Certainly not good. Ditto on the PSU switch.

All things being equal, a quick press of the power switch does avoid Windows updates nags, whereas using the software shutdown forces you to click through these nags.

I'm not disputing that the ACPI setting on the machine could be incorrect. Since the PSU was first at the scene of the "accident" (storm) it's soft off functions could be compromised.

It seems that there could be more than one specific cause for these events, since if Windows was giving trouble before the electrical storm, the no shutdown could be related to malware or a corrupted file in Windows itself

 

[wedgies]

I guess I should clarify that I'm not just turning off the machine while Windows is up. I do perform a shutdown from the menu and once that occurs, I turn the power supply off since it is still running. Thanks for the advice thus far and I'll check the ACPI settings again (I'm pretty sure I've done that already but it never hurts to check again). I really appreciate the time that everyone has taken to answer. Thanks.

Wedgies