my pages load slowly: I have broad band cable modem, spyware has been removed and no apparent virus. YYYYYYY....?????

Use " Cablenut " tweaking software. It's the best ever and also free. You can get cablenut settings from tweakxp website too. It's excellent. You can also download " the tweaking experience " free registry guide which is one of the best of its kind but not complete. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\ServiceProvider has some priority values which can be twaked by changing them to 1. Four priority settings changed to data " 1 ". You can also delete both the subkeys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace

Deleting these subkeys will stop IE from searching for printers and shared folders each time it connects to the internet speeding up the browsing time. It will save you couple of seconds eachtime you visit a webpage. Also use Opera 8 beta which is by far the best internet browser. There are more than 5 good web browsers but Opera has it all. You name it and Opera has it. Firefox is an excellent browser too but Opera is resouce friendly and has many options which don't come with firefox by default. If you want more options in firefox you need to download firefox extentons which can be had from the firefox website.

Some websites need IE. Apart fromIE based sites you can use Opera and or firefox to browse the internet. Both are good but Opera comes with ads or no ads-registration where as firefox is completely free. But the ads in opera don't take any noticable bandwidth. The bw usage for ads is something like negligble and also it does take some space.

http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658

very interesting article on why IE seems to be slow.  The main reason it appears that IE is slow, is that more and more servers are using Linux Apache to serve their web pages, and IE uses a non-standard way (to non-Microsoft Servers anyway) in requesting pages.  The end result is that IE will continue to get slower as time goes by, because Linux is winning the Server wars.  The solution then would be to start using a Open Standards browser.  No amount of fiddling with IE will make it behave in a standard browser fashion.

Go to the Properties of your network places and then the properties of your network card.  Look at the TCP/IP properties and look at the DNS settings.  It is either set by your Internet provider or is statically input.  If set by DHCP, then your provider is giving you them and they should be correct.  If statically set, and even if not, it won't hurt to check with your ISP to make sure the proper entries are in there.  I had problems before with AT&T messing with the DNS

I don't think you need to go to FireFox as a first step to solve the problem, because it's unclear yet what your problem is.

Your first step should be to see if the problem is on your PC, or if it's on your wire.

1) You could very well have too many people sharing your cable connection.  Cable modems are a shared connection, similar to a hub or the old telephone party lines.  While you DO have exclusive use of the modem, you don't have exclusive use of the cable, and are sharing your bandwidth with your neighborhood.  DSL, on the other hand, provides an exclusive connection to your ISP's local wiring office, so typically provides better speed.  Do you notice the problem being worse at different hours of the day?  It may have started crawling last week just because all the schoolkids are now at home and running P2P software 24x7 and sucking up all your bandwidth.

Close out all other explorer windows, then go to this site and test your bandwidth speed: http://www.dslreports.com/stest

Here's what my speedtest shows:

Your download speed : 1245742 bps, or 1216 kbps.
Your upload speed : 321728 bps, or 314 kbps.

If your broadband connection tests fast, then it's probably a problem with Explorer, spyware, or both.  

2) If your broadband is slow, as samccarthy says above, check your cable modem settings with your ISP.

2a) If your settings are right, and your broadband connection STILL tests slow, then you might consider changing providers, going with DSL, or bitching load and long to your cable provider.  Or, shift your Internet activity to a time period with low use in your neighborhood (e.g. 9am).

3) Do you have Windows XP SP2?  You should consider downloading it.  Go to http://windowsupdates.microsoft.com
4) Note that Webroot's SpySweeper doesn't catch everything (in fact, none do).  In testing shown here http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm , SpySweeper caught, on average, 55% of the tested spyware/adware packages.  You should read the links on the test page, and definitely run HiJackThis! found here: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Note that HiJackThis! will show all programs that load at boot, IE load, and all the toolbars and doo-dads you've installed, including all the helpful ones.  Delete with caution, because you might delete something useful.

5)  If your bandwidth is still high, but your browser is sluggish, then try running CWShredder, also available from http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html to see if you have CoolWebSearch.  Run CWShredder -> HiJackThis! -> AdAware -> repeat until clean.

6)  Try to uninstall as many applications as you can.  Having 120 applications loaded will drag your system to a halt.

7)  Cleanup temp files, empty your cache, delete your cookies, and Defrag your system to improve performance.

8)  Once you've tried everything else, and if it's still slow, you have two options:  Mozilla's Firefox, or reload your PC.

Best of luck!

1cissp

You stated that sometimes when the webpage hangs, it states in the title bar "Program Not Responding".... You have some currupted files I believe. If your computer has only been doing this for several days, use XP's built in "System Restore" utility and roll the system back to a week or so ago, before this problem began to manifest.

Or, try using the System File Check utility. Do that by clicking on your start menu, click on 'run', type in "CMD" and hit enter. In the black window that pops up, type "SFC /ScanNow" and hit enter.

Mugman

Maybe you just have a ton of stuff on your hard drive and need to burn stuff off of your hard drive and defrag your hard drive because you said it downloads stuff fine it was just when you go from page to page. Then try the other suggestions, personally I partition my hard drive and save my stuff on any partition except for the C: Drive partition and then if something goes wrong I can just install XP or what ever operating system you have and be back online after installing drivers for your LAN card, motherboard, etc. Partition Magic 8.0 is what I use. I also know there are IE fixes out there that you can get to fix certain things with regards to internet explorer but a format and reinstall works really good.

Do local programs run smoothly on your puter?
And not like notepad but I mean some "heavier" applications.
If not the prob could easily be you having to much crap on the puter (pardon the language). If they run smoothly it'll be something to do with internet.

I'd really have a peak if it's just your puter or anyones puter with your connection. Maybe you are looking for a prob which does not reside on your end. And if it isn't on your end you can at least blame someone else (always makes ya feel better). The ISP might be the culprit.

Anyways good luck and happy new year

go into network connections....

right click on your bband connection and do propities

it should say sumin like

"This Connection uses the following items"

then have about 4/5 lines of stuff

please post what it says there