About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that connecting to web pages was very slow. I previously have had blazing speed when connected to the internet. I thought it might be an IE6 problem, so I started using Netscape 7.1. Now, even Netscape is giving me a little trouble, in the past day or two. My computer still connects fast, and says I'm connected at 100.00 mbps. Uploading and downloading files seems to be the same as it always was, but browsing the net has become slow and tedious. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this might be?

Have you checked for spyware or other non-necessary background processes?

I ran AdAware and Spybot, and also have SpyWare Blaster and Spyware Guard running. How do I find other background processes, and which ones do I stop?

You already taken care of spyware so I would doubt if there is more to go on.

You can install a software sniffer to watch your traffic for unusual activity, like OPENXTRA. This will "log" all traffic going in and out of your machine. Once you have looked at the log it will tell you if your machine has programs running in the background creating traffic.

Alternatively, your ISP is slow, because they over-subscribe their broadband lines. this is not unusual.

100Mbps at your machine is not the problem - the 256Kbps or 1Mbps at your DMARC is the problem.

Could also be a hardware problem. I'm assuming you have cable or dsl internet. If you have a router between your modem and pc, as you should, check the speed from somewhere like dslreports.com and note it. Then remove the router, reconfigure your pc to connect directly to the modem and check the speed again. If there's a dramatic difference your problem is probably the router developing starting to fail.

Checked it just now, got basically identical results with and without the router. I'll keep digging...

Have you checked with your ISP to see if they show a problem in your line. I had extremely slow service for a while. It turned out my ISP cut my service down to their lowest setting because of excessive bandwidth use. My son downloading tons of music. They reset it to full bandwidth after I promised to limit my unlimited bandwidth use.

What do you have cable or DSL?
If DSL, what is your distance from the CO?
If DSL, what type (SDSL, ADSL, IDSL, etc.)?
If DSL, it is very possible that a simple transformer/line change down your line messed things up. Did you see any building construction between your house and the CO? Adding new heavy electric machinery onto a power grid with improperly grounded telco lines can do some serious degradation of DSL.

To eliminate the possibility that it is an electric interference, you need to track your "bandwidth". The simplest way is to send a ping (ICMP echo) to a known location.

Safest one is the far end of your router. i.e. if you do a tracert to anywhere, it will show first your router, then the far end router, then a bunch of other routers, then the destination. By using just the far end router of your line, you eliminate the possibility that a web site is down, or the CO bites, nor will you tick off your ISP...

You can download various free packages that will do just that. You will be able to chart a graph from the captured data, and might even find out that when Bob the Builder next door kicks up his wood drill press, your DSL bandwidth goes down... :cheesy:

Ok, I checked with my ISP, and they say my connection is fine. I've run tests on different sites (dslreports, Verizon's test page, etc.) and they all say my DSL speed is fine, pretty much the best rated in the area. My ISP seems to think that I may have too many tasks in the background using up system resources, but I don't kow which ones to safely disable. I also ran a Hijack This report, but I have no idea of how to read it. Any other suggestions?

There are lots of places to post a hijack this report, I'm not sure this is the right place. Does anyone else have any thoughts about it? (Hmmm... thinking back, About every 6-8 months I have to format and reload my xp machine cuz it gets slow on the net also. I just accepted it cuz I do lots of stuff that is diagnosis and experiments for other pc's in our network and figured I probably just got too much conflicting stuff in it after a while.) I'm going through the learning curve on Hijack thisso may not be able to help too much.