Computer help forum: Online browsing speeds deteriorating over time

I have found the Comcast speed test to be very much inline with the other speed tests. They all vary a liitle. Even if you do not trust their own speed test, you should still be armed with those results when you call them. The slow down that you are noticing probably has more to do with overall internet traffice and not your specific service although your speed can be affected by how many users there are on your street. When you factor in all the new devices such as smart phones and tablets that are accessing the internet now, it is a wonder we can still access anything. I am not sure, but I would guess in this bad economy, that many companies are not spending a whole lot on upgrading the capacities of their servers and instead just giving us little less.

Broadband speed test run directly from Firefox that includes the speed ratings (for example if you're on cable and getting DSL speeds, it shows you that)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/broadband-speed-test-and-diagn/?src=userprofile#

If you've tried Firefox and it's no better then that would rule out things like temp files, add-ons, etc.

I have never seen a failing hard drive slow down browsing but XP does do a good job of "hiding" bad track problems from you.

I would suggest a different tack - I would try Linux, specifcally Ubuntu. It's free and very easy to load. You can try it out before installing it (although running it isnide XP won't prove anything). You can also "Dual Boot" with XP. It's VERY simple to do and then your browser (Firefox) would be isolated from all the other problems of an aging XP installation. If that's no better then you know your problem is outside your computer.

Yes, you need about 10G of free disc space to load Ubuntu but new disc drives are very inexpensive and much faster (and much bigger). Upgrading your hard drive is probably going to improve your computer anyway..

The other point that you should consider is maxing out your memory. It is also very cheap and don't hesitate to discard smaller chips to ensure you are maxed.

XP is a great OpSys but it degrades with time and another easy (LOL) fix is to re-install Windows. This will give you back the performance your had when you bought your m/c. Yeah... but it's just too much trouble re-installing everything else!! And installing XP on a new drive doesn't really help!

P.S. There should be a LAW that all web developers have to test their programs on a 1200 Baud line!! But usually they are attached directly to their test Web Server and access is at lightning speed. So they have no clue how inefficient their web pages are - and they just don't care and it just keeps getting worse!

consider your router.
Mine went from 80-500kbps to 13 MBps with new router.
sudden degredation just as rapidly repaired, and with "n" wireless now!

If your problem lies in your computer, the others have given you plenty of advice about overhauling it. I won't contradict any of it, except the guy who said "Go Apple instead." There's always one and your OS is your choice..

There is one other possible cause of slow broadband speed, about which which my ISP warned me when I complained about really slow broadband speed. The tech asked, "Do you switch your modem/router off last thing at night?" Yes, I was. He warned me that, whenever a modem is switched off, a piece of the ISP's's kit in the local exchange gets a signal and thinks, "Oh oh! This guy's having trouble receiving. I'll slow the signal down a bit to help."

Sometimes there's a power cut and sometimes you have to switch a modem/router off or reboot it when it drops a connection. Just now and then doesn't matter, but doing it regularly over a week or two will really slow things down. The solution is to stop switching off. It will recover speed in a few days. Its power consumption is negligible.

This may not apply to you but, if anyone else is regularly switching off, that's the probable cause of slow speed.

since typically the download and upload speeds are the same. Cable varies from one time of day to another, and upload speeds are typically a tenth of download speeds in my experience, often well below DSL speeds.
You can have the fastest download speed in the world, but if you click a lot of buttons on a page, it takes a lot of time to send those in order for new pages to load, or pages to refresh, if your upload speed is at a snail's pace.

There are a number of things you should do to speed up an old PC, particularly if you aren't in the habit of doing them periodically. Because you seem to have pretty much left the thing to run on its own, I would suggest the following steps in the following order:

1. Get the freeware CCleaner and clean up your hard drive.

2. Obtain a modern anti-malware program, uninstall the old program and install the new. Newer versions, particularly the popular Norton, are much faster and cleaner and place much less of a burden on your system than older (before 2010) versions. I would suggest getting a copy of Norton Internet Security 2012, which is often heavily discounted at price clubs.

3. With your new anti-malware program, run a full scan and let it delete anything it finds.

4. Install and run Spybot Search and Destroy, an excellent freeware anti-adware/anti-spyware program. Make sure you update it before you run it. Delete everything it finds. It will probably find a whole lot. In fact, in all likelihood the things it finds have been the primary reason your computer slowed down.

5. Run sfc, the DOS/Windows System File Check. You must open a Command (DOS) window as administrator, and the command to enter at the C:\ prompt is sfc /scannow (note that the slash is a front-slash, on the question mark key, and is preceded but not followed by a space). This will run for quite a while and you may need your original system installation distribution disk (most big PC makers put the needed files on the hard drive, though, so you may not need it).

6. Run a registry cleaner and defragmenter. There are many free versions available. No matter how badly my registry was messed up I have never noticed a difference in performance from any of these, but I feel the need to add this step anyway because it is so deeply ingrained in PC mythology that it is practically a statutory requirement that this step be included in any set of PC instructions, sort of the way every movie has now got to have William Macy in it.

6. Defragment your hard drive. I suggest the commercial software PerfectDisk, which is the only disk defragmentation utility that has actually made my computer run noticeably faster. First defragment the hard drive, then do an offline defragmentation of the system area.

If, after all this, your PC is still running slow, there are other things to try. I once restored like-new speed to a "mature" and really slow PC by flashing the ROM BIOS with the latest version. Instructions on how to do this vary by chipset manufacturer, and you can find the software and instructions on the manufacturer's website. Note that this not your PC manufacturer. You can identify your chipset (and everything else on your PC) by running the excellent freeware utility PC Wizard.

If you're still running slow you can update your drivers. There are now pretty good software utilities that identify obsolete drivers, locate the most recent versions, and install them automatically. This can be tricky, however. They're not all foolproof and I once had one of the best of these utilities, the one from WinZip, install an incorrect driver for one of my USB devices. I had to identify the device, locate the correct driver on the manufacturer's website, and install it manually to get some of my peripherals to work.

If that doesn't work, my final and most drastic suggestion is to wipe and reload your computer from the initial distribution disks (or the hard drive partition where the .cab files were placed by the manufacturer). This ALWAYS works but it's a royal pain. You not only have to backup all of your data (documents, pictures, whatnot) and reinstall your Windows but also all your device drivers, then update your newly-installed original Windows to current (which will take HOURS on a five year-old system; you will have to run Windows Update over and over and over again before it comes up clean), and reinstall all your software, making sure you have the latest versions (after getting rid of the manufacturer's crapware again). And then you have to copy back your data.

But your computer will run like new!

I've tested the new Symantec versions and they are pretty good. My clients need hand holding, and Norton sort of does that better than other products. After doing forced uninstalls on newer Norton Products, I no longer find viruses left over, like I used to, either. I don't like Norton, personally, but client satisfaction is more important, and it still out performs Trend Micro at the virus testing sites like AV Comparatives; which is considered a reputable test source. Kaspersky is good, but I've had a few clients machines blow up using it, and I tend to blame powerful AVs like it and especially AVG for causing serious problems. Both of them have been in the news because of this.

For me, give me Avast any day. Avast has NEVER let me down; nor my clients. And it is FREE!

The internet is in need of upgrading to faster servers , switches and routers, etc. So the traffic priority is now going to people shopping online instead of those who want to learn about new things without spending anything or being freeloading cheapskates.. You may still get speed at governmental or organizational websites like those ending with .org, .net, or .edu, etc. If you are going to .com websites without spending for a certain amount of time, you will probably be punted out to a slow server or liek that. This is my primary suspicion.. The ISPs are getting cheap in pursuits of profits..

Sometimes the Internet is selling your computer power to researchers in need of free computer power. What is insulting is that they soemtimes dont allow you to get out of the site so they can confine you to endless aimless struggles with hundreds of mouseclicks in effort to get out of the site while they use your computer power for free processing.. Your only way out is to turn off the computer.. sometimes they wont allow you to do so unless you click shutdown many time s enough to make them give you up... @%T@^#Those hackers are getting rich off your free computer processing power.. Oh sure, they mean no harm to you or your computer , they are just using you.. your antivirus or malware or spyware software vendors are making money under the table selling codes to hackers to get around your security to take advantage of your computing power for free. You can complain to www.something .gov about that... If neough of you complain, they will get the message and start cracking down on those harmelss parastic hackers selling your computing power to universities, companies, telemarketers, whomever else.. maybe there is really good anti virus , spyware or malware software out there but it sure is not norton or Mcafee .. It may be something else we never heard about but it can keep them out of your computer and the processing power that belong to you not them..

download a good system cleaner like 360 amigo or advanced system care,both have free versions.download drivermax and use it to scan your computer for outdated drivers,with the free version you can download 2 drivers a day,the upgrade allows you to download all at once.this should solve the problem.

...okay this is fun...felt compelled to reply... I love XP and have a few around.... no mention of level of skill or what anti virus or anti spyware is so I will go with what I have done with my XP machines... all downloads mentioned will come from www.downloads.com.... lets start by cleaning your computer...XP is OCD and likes to save everything... recommend downloading and cleaning the disc up with CCleaner.... it also has a registry cleaner... if you have no clue what your doing...do not click any check boxes... or you may say bad things about me.... you could defrag the disc... many defraggers out there... not impressed by any of them so use the one on the machine...with house work done lets move to upgrades... I would hope your system is upgraded with the latest and greatest that Microsoft has to offer... moving on to browsers..... you seem to love IE so upgrade to IE9... it actually uses less resources and seems to run better than 8... if you want a quick and speedy browser try Google Chrome... and you can import your Favorites.... it is light weight and all my XP machines love it..... security.... You make no mention of a firewall... personally I use Commodo for my firewall... works well... uses very little resources.... as for Antivirus I use Avast Free Home Edition.... updates itself daily and a quick scan usually catches most bug-a-boos.... spyware and root kits and other evil demons use up resources so I use SpyBot Search and Destroy.... you would be amazed at what it can find... and has a knack of cleaning up temp files before a scan...... to repeat myself...all this software is a freebie... as for speed tests... usually your ISP has a speed test link on the homepage... or you talk at them about your speed.... sometimes there is a equipment issue that no one is aware of.... I used to lose internet and cable when it rained.... bad cable across a 3 acre field was the issue.... hope all this helps.... Dave

Your 5 year old Xp machine like mine with 3 GB of RAM & 2.4ghz core2 duo probably has a pretty powerful processor... for an XP machine and I noticed the same problem. It started with IE8 on my XP and Vista computers and like you made me try Firefox again and that helped with things like streaming Hulu. Clearly IE 8 was a large part of the problem. Later IE 9 came out and things speeded up quite nicely........ but they did not make it compatible with XP. Personally I think they could have but they just want XP out of their life! Then about that time Firefox stated hitting me with so many updates I decided to go back to IE 8 on my XP machine which is still my #1! (Actually I love my W7 machine but use mainy XP cause it's good, I know it well, I'm loyal, to cheap to buy a newer Photoshop, and I want to see what lasts longer - that computer or XP support from MS) Firefox updates started taking longer to deal with than the added time of waiting on IE8 pages to load! HAHAHA

If like me you keep your computer well maintained with a good antivirus, two or three good anti malware programs
a good cookie cleaner, and have verified decent internet connection speed from your ISP there is not much you can do with an XP machine in the current internet environment except to try other browsers. Even then things are slowing down for everyone because the same thing that happened to TV is happening to the web. I've been using a VCR to tape and later watch programs for almost 30 years. When I FF then stop and play at a random spot the percentage of times I hit a commercial instead of part of a program has jumped dramatically over that time. So it is with web pages. AOL is a prime example. I used them as a home page for years. (No more) About the time they got in bed in a big way with Huffington Post for news content their web page loading time really jumped. I'd look at the bottom of the window and see the page loading then see "done" then I'd try to scroll or something and could not. I'd look down and see something else loading then "done" again. Heck, they tell me they are "done" like a dozen or more times before they are really done!! It's incredible how much stuff has to load on webpages......... then some add almost mandatory facebook, twitter, and youtube ......... crap I don't need while surfing. The thing they waste my time with that upsets me the most is probably the one that asks if I want to allow Adobe Plash Player to run in my browser. It comes on Windows machines, is free, and is so well ingrained into the Windows culture that any one with a Windows PC has always had it. I miss they days when a pop up would only come if you tried to play flash content without a player installed already.

Basically my suggestion is to try other browsers or get a W7 machine, or put up with the extra IE8 time wasted out of love for XP. Personally, I sold my Vista machine, bought a W7 machine, and split desk top computer duties between XP and W7. With a KVM switch for less than $25 (allows you share one keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, and a couple usb devices with 2 or more computers) all you need is a tower. That way, like me you could also use one computer for play with never a credit card number touching the keyboard and one for personal business perhaps with its own email address that is not known to the other computer and that never knows a facebook command or visits a questionable website. If you do that use the W7 computer for business because W7 and IE9 are more secure than XP and IE8 and that gap will only widen over time.

Slow browsing may have nothing whatsoever to do with your computer - not if everything else about your computer is normal.

You mentioned you have a broadband connection, so I assume you're with a cable provider or some similar service. Give them a call and ask them to check your connection speed. Most service providers have some pretty sophisticated diagnostic tools available to tell if your physical connection is up to snuff. If your service is satellite based...then never mind...

I've had the same issue on several occasions in the past, and believe it or not, the problem was always squirrels or other rodents chewing on the cable! You would not believe the kind of signal degradation chewed up cables can cause.

Of course, this may or may not be your problem, but it never hurts to call your service provider and see if they can help.