hullo again (i feel like i'm spamming but i swear i'm not!) seems that my laptop has hit a major slump, the past few days i've been having serious issues with loading pages and trying to download stuff. i haven't changed my settings, and i've tried using netscape 7.2 and IE (i know, i know) and they both seem to have really cruddy responses these days. i'll just note i've tried firefox and hated it, if anything it seemed slowest of all browsers i've tried.

anyway, haven't changed anything and even after a couple sweeps with ad-aware and my virus software, nothing suspicious turns up, so i'm at a loss as to what exactly the deal is. some pages load relatively quickly, so i guess it could be that i'm visiting pages with too much traffic, but somehow i think it's a little more to do with something jacked up in my system.

running a laptop with XP and 512 meg RAM, haven't installed anything or changed settings. if anyone can shed some light on the subject i'm all ears. thanks guys!

Did you recently clean out your cache by any chance?

uh... ya i did clean the cache, but it was after i noticed the horrible delays setting in. it was more of an attempt to correct the problem after i'd noticed it.

i'm afraid that it might just be my computer getting on in years and becoming computer senile or something. and at such a young age too. (three years now) sad mainly because my last computer lasted me 9 years before i decided i needed a new one.

still hoping for someone to come up with a miracle cure though! or at least some kind of jury rig to keep my laptop alive for the next six months.

Did you clean the cache on your PC or on the modem. What kind of connection do you have? I have cable and at times I need to unplug the modem and start it over. Might be worth a try but find out first if it won't give you other problems because of your ISP. Also are you on a network?

clean the modem cache? how does that work? or is that what happens when you unplug the modem then start over? we unplugged the DSL modem and put it back on. we've got it hooked to a hub with a couple computers running, but it wasn't an issue until a few days ago.

Yes, I meant unplugging the modem. If that doesn't work I'd also try the hub. Is that the only computer you're having trouble with?

ya, unplugged the modem, ditto the hub. actually all the computers (three, but never more than two on at once lately) have issues with speed. now i'm all by my lonesome and the connection is still iffy. it seems to be a lingering problem, which i guess means calling the "experts". of course you know they'll try and make up some lame excuse if it turns out that their stuff is at fault (and it always is...)

anyway thanks for the help, any more ideas will be welcome.

I'd call your ISP anyway! Though it was after an upgrade they put down our maximum speed. Also they might be able to tell you more if they're having problems.

There's one thing you could try, if it's possible connect a PC right to the modem without the hub between it.

unfortunately looks like a call to the isp. the direct connection to the modem didn't solve anything, so looks like the last play is to make the call. thanks to all for the help.