For a week or two now, I've been having a strange problem with the MtGO installation on my desktop. The client is extremely slow at login. First, I blamed it on my internet connection, but now I did some tests, and that is not the problem. Some details:

I performed all the actions suggested on the mothership: uninstall, delete the directory, reset the sockets, perform a clean install. During installation, download proceeded at a normal rate, about 5MB/s on average. However, during login, task manager reported speeds below 0.1 MB/s while loading user data. I repeated this a few times, with a few machine restarts thrown in for good measure, with no change. I tried to login on the same network with my laptop, and the login went normally, with user data downloading at about 1MB/s. I tried turning off the firewall, with no change. Now I'm looking for new ideas.

Anybody had a similar problem? Any ideas how to fix it?

What's the ping TTR look like? Traceroute? Does your Firewall, IDS, NIC or WiFi router have a throttle? Have you tested on a wired connection, and is there any difference? Also, what time of day are you doing this? Traditionally (last 10 yrs or so, in my experience) the servers slow way down during the holidays, so this could easily be the aggregate effect of two or more cumulative factors.

Traceroute has a hop with an asteriks in it, so that's a possibility. I've tried different times, no difference. What's a throttle? Turning off the firewall did not change anything.

I think the problem is the desktop, not the environment, since the program works normally on my laptop, on the same network. I was able to login normally on the laptop a few moments after the desktop took ten minutes to display the first screen, without the announcements.

I made a support ticket, they were quite responsive, but we didn't get anywhere. We tried the usual things, and then they sent my traceroute and DxDiag to a specialist, to see if they have any new ideas. I'm waiting on a response, but I don't have high expectations.

Right now, I'm backing up my user files, and preparing the desktop for a new, clean Windows install. And I've plugged a second video cable into my monitor, so I can play MtGO on the laptop using the monitor if the urge grabs me. Luckily, it's Ixalan, so I'm not missing much. And I have the Arena beta to fill the time - it works just fine on the desktop.

I just checked the traceroute on the laptop, and it's the same as on the desktop - as it should be. But the laptop loads the client normally - login goes through in about a minute. You may be right about cumulative factors.

Well, I found the cure: wipe the disk and reinstall the system. It worked. No idea what went wrong with the previous installation.

Glad to hear it is working for you again.

Yes, but it stopped again

One of the updates restored the previous problems. I think it was the fall designer update. But I was in practice, so I wiped the disk again, and chose to defer the updates. Working for now:

But it's not that simple, since it works on my fully updated laptop, on the same network. Maybe I'll decide to get a new desktop, it's three years old after all