Recently my wired ethernet connection has bee acting strange, getting very slow, then normal; but since last night very, very slow. I tried the DSL connection speed test and it took forever and was way below normal. This morning I just got error messages. But on another computer (laptop) with wifi, there's no problem at all.
So I talked to my internet provider tech support and it appears the DSL modem is not the problem. They thought it may be a hardware problem, because the computer is about 7 years old.
Thern a while ago I thought I'd boot from the Pinguy OS Branded CD (am now running unbranded Pinguy OS) to see what happens with that, in case it was a software issue. I booted from this CD last week without a problem, but today when it started it was rrreeeeaaallllyyy slow, like 10-12 minutes till it loaded the casper stuff and then the boot screen was going on forever and I finally just shut down the computer.
When I rebooted without from the HD my internet connection would not work. "Failed to connect to Auto eth0". Eventually I rebooted again and now the ethernet works!
So I'm a bit baffled by these symptoms. I'm thinking it's probaly hardware is failing, like the ethernet adapter. Or could something else be going bad? But why couldn't I boot from the CD?
Does anyone more knowledgeable than I have any ideas?