Page Loadtime Slow Lately

[JacobiB]

Hi there! I'm new to TechSpot, but I've been having a rather annoying problem with my internet connection recently, so I've come to seek out some help. Here's the scoop:

I use Firefox as my web browser. When loading webpages, load times are rediculously long...well, I wouldn't say "rediculous," but longer than I am used to. For example, I have my homepage set to Google.com. When I open Firefox, I see a white screen for about 5 seconds before the Google page appears, and that's a relatively simple page to load. It seems like, when I'm on a site that has forums or something (like this) the pages load a bit faster when I'm staying inside that particular site. I'm very confused because this never used to happen, even when I had already begun using Firefox. Here are my system specs:

Computer-Related:
Dell Dimension 8250
Pentium 4 2.6 GhZ
512MB RDRAM (PC1066)
Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB Graphics Card
160MB HDD

Internet-Related:
Road Runner High Speed Online Cable
Download Speed*: 4542kbps
Upload Speed*: 471kbps
Transfer Rate*: 567.7kbps

*Results provided by the Speakeasy Speed Test.

I should also mentioned that I'm connected to a 100Mbps LAN Network with three other computers hooked up to a Linksys router. I'm not sure whether or not my Download speed has anything to do with page loadtime, but I know that, from the results of that test, my download speed is pretty dang high. I've also tried enabling pipelining on Firefox, to no improvement.

If someone could help me out or give me suggestions for things I could try, it would be much appreciated. Also, if there's information I haven't included in this post that you think would be helpful to know, please let me know and I'll do my best to retrieve that info. Thanks again for all of your help!

 

[Liquidlen]

Welcome toTechspot!
Your speed test is great that's pretty fast.
I would suggest some house cleaning.
Delete temporary internet pages, ,check page file settings (set permanent size not dynamic)
Clear history on close of your browser.
Defrag , including a fresh page file, Plus set page file to empty at shutdown.
Turn off screen savers.
Try surfing without anti virus,Pop-up software other security programs to see if they are slowing you down(Surf to safe site only during test,this should not be dangerous as you are behind a NAT)
You can decide if some of my recommendations suit you I am only try to offer suggestions.

 

[JacobiB]

Thanks for the help! I'll try some of that stuff out and let you guys know what happens. One thing...when you say my "page file," are you refering to the virtual memory paging file?

 

[Liquidlen]

yes ,dynamic virtual memory settings will reflect your symptoms over time , that is one reason why I use a static page file, not located on the c:\ drive -O/S drive.