Internet Explorer running very slow on new computer

[garywallis]

I've just set up a new computer in the office (actually it's about 18 months old but been sitting in its box all this time). We have a small office network (peer to peer) which was no problem to set up, the computer connects directly to the internet over this network. Each computer has its own IP address and are connected through an ethernet switch. The ADSL router is connected to the same ethernet switch. We have no problems with this set up on any other of the computers in the office, however the new machine (running IE 6 on XP Pro) takes an age to download pages (up to five minutes per page), other sofware is fine. Can anyone help with this. I've attached a Hijack this report in case this helps.

 

[Mark56]

The first thing I would do is upgrade the XP PC to IE8 and see if there is any improvement. Don't go up to IE9 as that is not compatible with WinXP.

The Hijackthis log looks fine.

 

[garywallis]

Thanks for your suggestion. I installed IE 8 this morning but although this has improved things marginally, it is still running very very slow. I will install another browser, probably firefox, to ascertain if this is an IE problem or a system problem. In the meantime, I would welcome any further suggestions.

 

[Mark56]

Something is obviously not set correctly.

Try this speed test on the problem PC and also on another that is working OK and see what the difference is.

http://www.speedtest.net/index.php?nojs=1

Have you made sure it is set to a static IP address and not to automatically assign.

 

[garywallis]

I've run the speed test on the problem PC and an identical PC that is not having problems. On both Macines It returns the same 38 fixes possible and the speed bar is set at "critical" There doesn't seem to be any way that I can post the full list of sugested remedys to this forum for scrutiny.

The TCP/IP settings are set to use the entered address, not automatically assigned.

 

[Mark56]

Not sure about the results you got with the speed test. It should give you upload and download speed and a ping test, not suggested fixes. May be this runs differently in other coutries.

Not sure what else to suggest, in the Device Manger what does it show when you expand the list under Network Adapters?

 

[garywallis]

Thanks for your response. Sorry that I confused you with regard to the speed test. As I said, the internet connection is really slow, so slow that the speedtest website was taking an age to download. The first part of the page was showing a URL link to Uniblue's "speedupmypc" utility so I made the assumption that this was what you were suggesting. I went to another PC and downloaded this utiliy directly from Uniblue's website on to a memory stick and ran it on both PCs from the stick. I can't run the correct speedtest utility on the slow PC because the connection times out before the web page is loaded. On the other PC's I get the result of IPing 26ms, Dload 25.58 Mps and Uload 0.83 Mps. 've looked at the network card on device manager and all seems ok (I've re-installed the driver). I installed firefox and although this runs slightly faster than IE the problem remains

I've realised the internal network does appear to be slightly slower too. I'll replace the connecting ethernet cable in case this has become damaged in some way

 

[Mark56]

This is becoming a bit of a mystery.

Try turning off the firewall.

Click on Start and then Run, and type each of these commands in the box hitting Enter after each one. Make sure you leave the gap in the middle.

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

 

[garywallis]

This is indeed a Mystery. I was spending so much time trying to rectify this problem and suspecting it might be a hardware fault, I decided it might be more cost effective to buy a new PC. Our local PC store was selling a good spec Windows 7 machine for less than £250 so I went for that. Within an hour I had it set up with a perfect connection to the network and internet and an email account.

Not giving up on the original PC (it had originally cost me far more that £250!) I found some space in the office and connected it up to the network in order to work out what was wrong - but this time it worked perfectly, I am baffled!

Thanks so much for taking the time out to help.

 

[CAMusing]

Try the suggestion here:
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2009/03/ie8-slow-maybe-this-tweak-will-help/