Hi,

I have Cable internet and for the last week my internet has been running very slow. It's perfect when downloading or using downloading programs such as Kazaa. but when i'm browsing in Internet Explorer it is really slow. I have three computers on the network and the other two run fine, donwloading and browsing, only the server computer is slow.

Does anyone know what to do? I've rung my ISP and they've said it has nothing to do with them, which is true as the other two computers are fine, so it must be something on this computer or something that's wrong with internet explorer.

Please help me...

RyanOnline

I'm not going to run and say "IE sucks and go use an alternative browser such as Mozilla". But to be perfectly honest, installing Mozilla would be a great first step to debug this issue. It will determine whether the problem is with the computer or just the Internet Explorer web browser.

You say it's a server computer? Is there a lot of stuff running in the background that might slow it down? What firewalls and antivirus solutions are installed?

Umm... Kazaa, huh? Methinks you've answered your own question right there. :mrgreen:

Kazaa and other filesharing programs are chock full of all sorts of spyware nasties, many of which attack and modify IE. As Dani suggested, try Mozilla, firefox, or Opera as an alternative to IE; those browsers aren't prone to much of the "malware" that infects IE.

If you can't pinpoint the slowdown, I'd suggest running SpyBot, Ad Aware, and HijackThis to check your system for malware. These programs are free to download, and they work well:

SpyBot: http://www.safer-networking.org/
Ad Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
HijackThis and CWShredder: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Read through the theads in our Security forum for more information on spyware issues and their solutions.

Thanks for your help, Mozilla didn't run any quicker and i'm running SpyBot S&D again to make sure it got everything.

Do you think Uninstalling and then reinstalling Internet Explorer would help?

Oh, and i'm using Norton Systemworks with all the virus and email checks on, i've had that for over 3 years and its only been going slow for the past week.

Anyway thanks for your help,

Ryan

Since you said Mozilla was slow too, reinstalling IE probably won't help, but it won't hurt either.

After you run SpyBot, reboot and then run Ad Aware; one of those programs will often catch something that the other didn't detect. Tell us what happens after that.

YAY! I know why it is running slow!

Ok, I have Norton Personal Firewall, and its always enabled. When i disabled the firewall to visit a blocked website it was back at its normal speed! But i can't have it disabled all the time so what should i do?

Oh, and it started getting slow when the resubscription dialog box came up saying i need to resubscribe soon. Could the two be linked?

Thanks

Ryan

Your best option by far, given that you have a network, is to use an all-in-one Cable/ADSL Gateway/Router/Modem. Full anti-intrusion protection, no software overhead, and you can now purchase them at a quite low price.

You should also check to see if you have your network configured appropriately. Just because it works doesn't necessarily mean it's properly configured to work well.

I's also check, if you have Windows XP, to make sure you're not using the inbuilt Windows XP Firewall as well as your Norton one. Having both running can slow things down. If you're simply getting a reminder message that you need to renew your subscription, I'd doubt very much that it would impact on performance.

Hi,

All i had to do was to upgrade my Norton Anti Virus Software, its a bit strange that because i haven't upgraded my internet goes slow but it's all fine now.

Thanks everyone!

Ryan

i have the same problem (super slow web browsing), which started when I recently did a live update on my 2002 Norton Firewall. I had just re-subscribed a few weeks earlier. When I disable the FW, the speed returns, so I know that therein lies the problem. I was hoping there was some way to "undo" the update, or just reconfigure things.
RyanOnline said he solved the problem when he upgraded his Norton AntiVirus software. That's it? Just upgrade the Antivirus software to a 2004 version? What about the Firewall? Does that have to be upgraded as well?
Thanks. This is killing me. It is horribly slow.
GraveyGuy

Solid, now I can start picking up all the hair I've pulled out and apologize to my computer for the frowning and fist-shaking. I'm having the exact same problem, slow IE6, Norton subscription required. Thanks for posting this.