Pictures take minutes to load and webpage interactivity is slow

I'm not sure what started this or when, but I did a clean install about 2 months ago to update to 22h2 and I don't remember encountering issues like this at first.

For the past maybe 1-2 weeks most pictures hosted on the internet just refuse to load instantly (as they used to or as they should) and take an incredible amount of time, like minutes at least regardless of size (can be an emoji on discord.) I can't even begin to troubleshoot the problem, because I have no clue how to search for anything like this, and any search results I get are about issues in the explorer, not online. The main place I noticed it at is Chrome and Discord, but it happens in Edge and Brave too. Torrent reaches max download speed (2000 mbit/s), videos/streams don't buffer either. Ping in games is normal (20) with no spikes.

Trying to download pictures (at this point they're still like halfway into loading inside Chrome)



Opening some pictures in new tabs



Discord emotes menu



Clicking on stuff like login on pages, or other stuff can take a while to load as well, but the most noticeable thing is pictures just struggling to load by every bar of pixels.

This only happens on my pc, not on the other ones connected to the same network either via wifi or cable. Phones are fine as well.

What I tried so far:
Restarted router/modem,
Swapped ethernet cables,
Tried 1gb intel port (using 2.5gb realtek port by default),
Changed dns on pc to Google,
ipconfig release/renew/flushdns/winsock reset
Reinstalled ethernet drivers

What I haven't tried yet:
Safe mode networking
Network reset in Windows settings

Ideally I'd like to be able to figure out what causes this as it's really disruptive to my daily activity, but I don't know what troubleshooting steps I can take other than what I've already done, so I'd really appreciate if anyone with any idea after reading this could share it with me.

My motherboard is an Asus Rog x570 Dark hero, using the 2.5gb realtek port on it. Windows version is 22623.875

Take a look in task manager while the picture(s) are loading, and see if there is anything else using a lot of CPU %. Maybe also run some additional antivirus, such as malwarebytes and check for adware.

John

Is there perhaps a pending system update that slows everything down until you update and restart?

Just curious, are you running IPv6 on Verizon FIOS? If true, try switching to IPv4 only.

How do you switch?

Maranna said:

How do you switch?

Click to expand...

Settings -> Network & internet -> Advanced network settings -> More network adapter settings

Bring up the old Network Sharing panel. Uncheck the IPv6.
Enable or Disable IPv6 in Windows

The Verizon router has a IPv6 bug that doesn't work with some Windows drivers, so disabling Windows IPv6 forces all traffic to IPv4 mode.
But this might be also useful if you have compatibility problems with other ISP/router models.

Thanks for the info. I have no network issue with Comcast but if I did and followed your advice to use ipv4 and not ipv6 would I go to properties and uncheck ipv6 and leave ipv4 ticked?

Ive been experiencing this just in the last week. Same issue. I could on my end attribute it to a windows update, or a browser update.
Other then that nothing else has changed on my end. Im on latest windows 11 21H2 and I use Firefox latest.

Maranna said:

Thanks for the info. I have no network issue with Comcast but if I did and followed your advice to use ipv4 and not ipv6 would I go to properties and uncheck ipv6 and leave ipv4 ticked?

Click to expand...

Yes. All modern routers are dual-stack (supporting both at the same time), you at least of them (IPv4 or IPv6) checked on. If you don't have IPv6 issues, it's better to use it since newer apps & services can take advantage of IPv6 features.

Thanks alot