Windows 7 Ethernet speeds suddenly VERY VERY slow

[hgelpke]

I've been using an old MSI Wind PC as a home server and yesterday, something odd happened. Suddenly, pretty much out of nowhere, my ethernet connection became really slow to the point where even streaming a file via a SMB share or logging in via RDP was arduous and close to impossible. I've never had any experience with anything like this and was hoping somebody might have some insight.

I did not install any new software, including Windows updates so by all accounts, nothing should have changed. I'm stumped.

 

[davehc]

Can you give a couiple of details on how you connect? The answers will be depending on that.
For example, one of my family uses a ten year old Linksys router for his local Lan. The same fault happens about every month. The solution he has found, right or wrong, is to do a hard reset of the router. It seems to get full of data, somewhere, but we cannot see, in the config, where that could be.

 

[Trouble]

davehc has an excellent point and I would suggest following his recommendation and see if that helps with your issues. It's likely it will.
Alternately if as you have said, you have made no software changes that is likely to have impacted your network performance then the likely culprit is probably going to be noise.
In the case of wireless performance any competeing devices (cordless phones, neiighbors wifi (especially in apartment buildings and or dorms) proximity, failing radio on card or router, etc., or in the case of wired connections bad cables, emf interference, or failing network adapters can generate noise and cross-talk that will impact performance.