Sudden Speed Decrease

Hi everybody, I'm not sure if this is the right section to be posting in as I am not sure whether the speed decrease is due to my laptop or my connection. I apologise if this is the wrong section for this thread.

My problem is thus, my computer has suddenly overnight become absolutely so slow I can barely believe it. Opening new tabs in my broswer takes forever, MSN messenger takes ages to skip from conversation to conversation, any pop ups have to be clicked and then take ages to disappear, it's terrible.

The strange thing is I have had my laptop/phone line/internet connection for little over 6 months now and up until now it has been absolutely fine, a very smooth connection, no problems at all.

Here is my set-up. Acer Aspire 5050 laptop, and Orange wireless broadband (which I have set-up with a wire at the moment because I cannot fathom how to make a wireless connection) I use Mozilla Firefox to browse and also use MSN messenger all the time. As far as specs go, I am not a techy person at all which is why I have come here in the hope that someone who is can help me!

Windows XP told me I was low on virtual memory and I told this to a friend and he instructed me to change it from the 700 and something it was at up to 1000, the limit being 1200 or thereabouts, this doesn't seem to have helped at all though.

If anyone thinks they might know what the problem is then please help! I use my computer a lot every night, for selling things/keeping in touch with my friends, I really need to get it sorted.

Thanks,

Olly Goodland

 

mems doen't change that much on the web mostly on programs
have you tried direct which means no router, just straight to laptop from modem router. if you have two which is
other one is resetting things on the router
does it work??

 

You want to make sure you have cleaned the browser cache, cleared out cookies and done a defrag of the HDD. While the internet connection itself does not use any drive access, all the software you use to navigate around the web certainly does use drive space. If your system has not been maintained on a regular or even daily basis doing the above might help.

Also if that does not work it is possible you Windows registry could be fragmented. A fragmented registry can cause HUGE slow down in apparent speed. You can find a program from SysInternals (now owned by Microsoft) called PageDefrag. It is free and I have been using it for several years now to help keep the registry in better shape. Set it to automatically run every time you start your computer. It does not take long once the registry no longer fragmented. Mine takes about an extra 10 secs total to boot...

Here is the link to the info page about the program:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/PageDefrag.mspx

If I were you and you do not know for sure if any of the above has been done then start with clearing the cache, clear the cookies, defrag the hard disk, then run the PageDefrag utility.

All of that should be done as the first pass to solve the issue and depending on your hard disk size and the amount of fragmentation on the drive, could take only a couple hours or overnight. So be patient. Also disk fragmentation is not the same as fragmentation in your system registry. Windows defrag will not touch the pagefile or the registry files. Hence the need for the PageDefrag utility.

But if those things do not help, then other factors need to be looked into...including a bad update for your Firewall, anti-virus, even Windows itself. Given the sudden nature of the slow down it could be any of those...

Oh, yeah, also go and run a SPEEDTEST on your connection. Just do a google on BROADBAND SPEEDTEST and you will find plenty of sites that you can use. It is best to find a site that is close to wherever you are geographically that way you will get more accurate results. I would run this FIRST because it's not unheard of for a tech to fiddle with something for another customer and screw up another connection. That is especially true for DSL. If the numbers are over 10% lower then the speed you are paying for then call your service provider and they can test things while you are on the phone and let you know for certain. BTW, it is normal for a 3Mb connection to test at 2400-2800, or lower because much depends on some technical things with the length of the connection to your home...better yet just post the results here first and someone will help make heads or tails of it...