Ridiculous browsing speed in Windows 7

First of all, i've searched for solutions as best i can with the current speed, but it basically takes forever.

Situation: New clevo arrived today. Windows 7 Home Premium 64. After startup, i notice IE is extremely slow browsing sites, but i forget about it for a few minutes, as i'm still tweaking other things. Then i download firefox, and experience the same thing.

I download all windows updates (with excellent download speed), expecting things to be better afterwards. No change. I try several bandwidth measurment sites, and they all come up good. 5Mbit down, 1Mbit up. All downloads perform as expected.

But browsing, it feels like someone sent me back to 1995, and there's no differene between firefox and IE, outside of IE having marginally worse performance. Even more annoying is the fact that certain sites seem to be much more agreeable than others. The worst ones are google.com and notebookreview.com (so far).

If i type in Google and hit enter, i have to wait for maybe 20 seconds until the whole page pops up instantaneously. Same behavior for nbr. If i do a google search, the results pop up immediately. Navigate to a new page, however, and it takes another 20 seconds.

Where to start? Remember that there's nothing wrong with my bandwidth.

 

It also took 20 seconds to submit this thread And about 40 seconds to find that smiley from the list

 

Do in safe mode with networking enable and see if the same thing happens.

 

Check out your internet connection. speed test, ping test, etc.

 

Tried going from wireless to wired, but no difference in that respect.

The internet connection is fine. Like i said, bandwidth is stable at 5 Mbit/1 Mbit. I'll try safemode next.

 

Any dubious add-ons? Although that shouldn't affect Firefox...

-> Also, are you sure all Windows Updates are installed? It might be downloading updates and hence slow you down.

 

Thanks, but that would affect my bandwidth measurements. There is no network traffic when idling. All updates are down, only one optional update is available. No add-ons. This is a clean computer, and the browsing issue was discovered in IE before i had done anything else.

 

Bearclaw, it certainly is nice browsing nbr in safe mode! So i guess the next step is to find out which service/setting messes up browsing in regular mode. Hints are much appreciated.

 

Your Anti Virus software could be a prime candidate...

 

Agreed, but i had the problem before i installed AVG. I have also tried disabling Windows Update, Windows Firewall to no avail.

 

Ok, this makes no sense. After restarting in regular mode, it is also fine here. I must have tweaked something before i put it in safe mode, but i can't remember what.

I think we all learned a valuable lesson today. Ahem.

Thanks for the input anyway, folks.

 

You still haven't learned the lesson....

Write down everything you tweak on a machine.

 

If you "tweaked" something on the computer then I take it as a bad sign...

-> Microsoft themselves don't know the OS because it's just too big nowadays, how can a self-proclaimed guru know? (who most likely wrote some guide you followed)

 

When will i ever learn that irony doesn't hit home on a message board?

By tweaked i mean that i disabled a service, deleted an unnecessary program, changed a setting for my network card, changed a setting in my browser etc. When you're in that process, cursing at every failed attempt, you sometimes forget that a good old reboot might also be required, even for the tiniest step.

I did google searches for this exact problem, and there were many reports describing what i experienced - just no defining, "this is the reason" replies.

 

The only problem there is, that you might disable a service that is actually needed and hence break some compatibility somewhere.

 

Oh certainly, but i have a decent overview over which services are necessary/rarely used/a complete waste of memory. It's not a huge hassle to re-enable one of them if it turns out something no longer works. Hopefully that happens, so i can figure out what caused the browsing problem

 

so you know the 250+ services of the os, what they do, how they interdepent, how they relate etc?

congrats, because normally no one really does without studying it for years.

 

I think Dave's given you the appropriate answer.

There is NO-ONE who knows how the OS works, anybody who does is lying.

The only person who comes very close is Mark Russinovich, and even he doesn't work alone nowadays.

 

You certainly gathered a lot of information from my post.

To suggest that you need intimate knowledge of the 250+ services to play around with a few of them makes no sense. You can google search all of the services and get good hints if you are even slightly uncertain about what they do. If uncertain, you don't bother to touch them. And nothing explodes if you inadvertently disable one you need. At worst, you spend some time figuring out what has happened.

 

Jebus, people, when did i ever say i know all the intimate details about Windows, let alone all the services which are set for auto start?

 

The problem is that a service in Windows is not like a cheap battery powered stereo that you glued to the dashboard of your car.

-> Sometimes services hide functions underneath the bonnet that aren't generally documented - Readyboost is also responsible for Readyboot if I am not mistaken - find out what the last one is, I'm sure you don't know (it's useful)
Additionally, services are interdependent, this can be especially important if you add new software that might require a service that you no longer have.

Would you remove a nut on your wheel? You have 4, 2 would hold as well
-> Same with a Windows Service - because you don't immediately see it's value, it doesn't mean that it's not useful or not needed.

And google... good old google... -> do yourself a favour and stick to the MSDN documentation, at least then it comes from the people who wrote the OS and not some self proclaimed gurus.

 

except when months later, you first time actually need that feature of that service you disabled because you thought " i never need that". then you come back here, and rant about how windows fails to do that stuff, and it doesnt' work, and you haven't done anything. till at some point we find out that your service setting for that feature got changed by you, months ago.

do you remember everything you've ever changed on your system? this topic shows, you don't. so you don't know how the tweaks you apply affect your system. maybe now, but not in some months. not after sp1 and other updates changed internal behaviour of the system. you just don't.

and that's the point: when ever you change stuff in the system, you affect it for the future. and you will forget about it.

anyways, i've discussed this with tons of "i'm so smart i can tweak my system much betterer than microsoft" people. they don't get it till years later. so i'll see you in some years.

 

A service which is no longer enabled. If something like this happens, i find the troubleshooting quite educational.

The condescension is strong in this one

Not debating this, but you usually don't just try your luck without checking several sources, and most of the time you'll not get horrifically burned if the information is somewhat misleading.

As an outspoken representative of the I'm So Smart I Can Tweak My System Much Betterer Than Microsoft People's Association, i'm delighted to hear that our paths will cross in a few years.

 

Haha what silly responses. The problem is solved... stop pretending that no one can know the ins and outs of the OS well enough to do something simple. You don't have to know quantum mechanics to tell someone why a ball falls and you don't need to know every inch of your computer to fix a problem.

Oh and he sure doesn't need to know all the services. If there IS a problem he just needs to look at the disabled ones, which I'm sure there are very few.