Sluggish internet performance

[Carol Chan]

Sooner or later it seems every XP machine I use gets slower to access and use the Internet. Has anyone else found this? And what have you done to correct it?

[jfrancho]

There are a bunch of things you can do. Clear out the cache, delete the cookies, get rid of the spyware, run a registry clean, defragment the drives. I like Diskeeper for defrags, I run all the popular spyware zappers, and Registry Mechanic keeps the system cleaned up. You can find a ton of good info here: http://www.pcmag.com/.

[brian.austin]

Google "internet explorer sluggish internet performance" and you'll get many different step-by-step articles, most relating what John just mentioned.

[Jose]

I blame the internet connection; I live in what used to be a rural area until a couple of years ago; now all the corn, cotton and soy bean fields are sprouting houses and I believe that these new neighbors are crowding the cable lines resulting is my lower speed.

[drichi]

Yep. Have the same problem. Have done all the defrag, reg clean, spyware removal, disc clean, cleaned up the start menu, go rid of unecessary rpograms, killed unnecessary programs running in the background, stand on your head and whistle dixie, and other stuff many times. Have never noticed a nickle's worth of difference afterwards.

[jfrancho]

Get a Mac

[20DNewbie]

Use FF and take a peek at this post.

http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/....html#msg82804

[TonyK]

Things to do:

Open Explorer (not IE)
Right click on the C drive (primary drive) and go to Properties
On the first tab, click on the Disk Cleanup button
After it comes up (will take a LONG time), click on the second tab.
Click on Clean Up... for the System Restore section
Clears your restore points (frees up a LOT of disk space)

Now click OK to remove the old items. I do not compress old files. My system cleans up temporary files and things like that.

Next, find your My Computer icon and right click on it, select properties from there.
Click on the Advanced Tab and then on the Performance / Settings button.
Check your visual settings (more = slower)
Click the Advanced tab. See if the system runs programs or services faster. I would make it foreground applications.
Check your Memory Usage to be sure it is for Programs
What is your virtual memory set at. Even with 3GB of RAM I still keep virtual memory set for those rare times I need it. Not having any virtual memory setup COULD impact your performance.

Defrag all drives on the system weekly.

go to your browser (IE, FireFox, etc) and clear out its cache. Letting the browsers do this themselves is relying on them to do it right.

This is how I keep my system perky without having to rebuild it on a regular basis. My last rebuild was when this system was built in March 2004.

Good luck,

Originally Posted by Carol Chan

Sooner or later it seems every XP machine I use gets slower to access and use the Internet. Has anyone else found this? And what have you done to correct it?

[JDArt]

The biggest culprit I've found in recent months has been spyware. No kidding. This stuff gets on your computer and can really slow down your Internet connection and overall system.

[TonyK]

That is why I run Spybot and clean my system weekly. Since getting some key enxtensions in FF I have found fewer and fewer tracking cookies.