IE7 very very slow to load pages

[CandyRed]

Hi,
I hope you can help me.
I usually use Firefox but have recently started a new job which uses an online tool which has to be used in IE7.
I need to look at numerous websites and speed is of the essence but it's taking anything up to 30 seconds (occasionally more) for each site to load...not fast enough for my needs. I have Comodo Firewall (updated) and newly installed Avast (also updated). Have done disk clean up, disk defrag, cleared temp files.
Is there any way to speed it up as I may lose my job if I can't work fast enough?
Any help very much appreciated.

Forgot to add, I'm using a Toshiba Equim L40 with Windows Vista

 

[Mugsy]

A few ideas

My first suggestion would be to disable any and all "Add Ons" to see if they are intercepting your requests.

In IE7, under Tools, "Manage Add Ons" and disable everything. Close and reopen IE, then see if anything improves.

I'd also take a good hard look at your Comodo Firewall. It is probably conflicting with the Windows firewall.

 

[CandyRed]

Ok. Thanks for the reply. I have disabled all add ons and will see how it goes tomorrow. If it's still slow should I disable Comodo? Is the Windows firewall enough? I search 100s of sites a day and never know what they are before I click on them.
Thanks for your help.

 

[Mugsy]

The Windows Firewall

The Windows Firewall is usually enough, but the reason 3rd Party Firewalls exist is because the Windows Firewall isn't "proactive" (that is, it doesn't detect threats before they happen).

If you are comfortable tweaking Windows, you can go through and MANUALLY add questionable software to the Windows Firewall, but you *could* cause more problems than you fix if you don't know what you're doing.

If there's a particular reason you *need* a proactive firewall, if Comodo turns out to be at fault.

This is a Work PC, right? If THEY (the company) require you use it, check all of its settings to the least intrusive available. But if you installed it yourself and DON'T have a specific reason for running a more complex firewall, get rid of it. The Windows Firewall will probably suit you fine.

BTW: What AV and/or Anti-Adware are you running (if any)?

 

[CandyRed]

It's a home laptop...I work from home but am required to check over 500 random websites per day.
Not comfortable with tweaking anything myself as I'm not that technically minded.
What do you think I should do? I'm happy to run a virus sweep every day. Would that be sufficiaent with the windows firewall?

 

[Mugsy]

Try it for a day

Simplest solution: try disabling Comodo for a day. If that speeds things up, get rid of it and invest in some good anti-adware software (or install the free "Windows Defender" from MS.)

 

[CandyRed]

OK....just gone back into IE....disabled Comodo, and it took this page 27 seconds to load

I've already got Windows firewall which i just switched back on and windows defender.

Is it worth uninstalling IE and reinstalling? How easy is this to do? What are the pros and cons considering I'm a noob!
(and thanks again for the info so far)

 

[Mugsy]

Add Ons

Okay, go back to my first suggestion and try disabling any Explorer add-ons.

Reinstalling IE is probably unnecessary. It just builds/shows the pages once it has downloaded the info. If it is doing that correctly, IE is probably fine.

The problem is either something is slowing the data from reaching you, or is slowing the speed at which IE creates the page once downloaded.