Slow laptop

[theladyisatramp]

Hi.

I've had this laptop for a year and half, and it's always been a little slow, but not too frustrating. I have an external hard drive, on which i store most of my music and photos, and currently my laptop has about 73% free disk space.

 

This week however, I've found that surfing the internet has been almost impossibly slow, in fact i've been using the university computers instead.

 

My security software is Sophos Antivirus, and I have scanned the disk for viruses several times this week, as well as running the Scan Disk in system tools and defragmenting.

 

It seemed to have recovered some speed this afternoon, but tonight it's been impossible, maybe the time of day doesn't help, but it isn't usually this bad. YouTube is stupidly slow, and i can't even load my university homepage.

 

Thank you for your attention.

[maynardvdm]

Hi

 

Can you tell us the make and model of the laptop.

 

Also when you feel at the bottom of the laptop, does it feel very hot?

[theladyisatramp]

It's a Dell Inspiron 6400. It feels warm underneath, but not particularly hot. It's mainly the internet thats very slow, the programs i have are functioning properly.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, and welcome from me too,

reading through, you say ordinary programs are OK and not too slow, and it is only the internet that is slow.

 

If that is the case it may well be your ISP. (internet service provider) there are several upload and download tests that can help prove that, just follow instructions here- Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

 

Please let us know the results you get. You may even be better trying several tests at various times of the day too.

Nev.

[theladyisatramp]

Thanks for the link. I've just done a test, and the results were poor: 0.08 Mb/s for downloads and 0.38Mb/s for uploads. I did notice a drop in internet speed from about 4 o'clock onwards.

 

I will keep on testing throughout the next day or two, and let you know.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Who is your ISP (Internet Service Provider) Lady?

[theladyisatramp]

My ISP is Virgin Media, although I will be switching soon to either talktalk or tiscali. However, my upload/download speeds are very poor compared to my isp's average, apparently.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Well I'm with Virgin and have no problems at all.

 

What size is the processor on that laptop an how much memory do you have?

[theladyisatramp]

my processor is an intel pentium dual-core, 1.86 GHz, and I have 120Gb of memory, with 320Gb on my external hard drive.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

The first figure is the size of the laptop processor, the second and third are the sizes of your hard disk drives not the memory that is installed on the laptop.

[theladyisatramp]

Were you talking about RAM? mine is 0.99Gb.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Do you clean out your temporary internet files on a regular basis?

 

Do you have programs running on startup that you don't really need?

[theladyisatramp]

I do clean out my temp files regularly, and no, i have no unnecessary programs running at startup. As I mentioned earlier, it's mainly my internet access which is slow, the other programs I have are running fine.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Who's your ISP and what browser are you running Lady?

[theladyisatramp]

I've already said that my ISP is Virgin media, and I use mozilla Firefox, as browser.

[Tootech]

Your PC is plenty fast enough.

 

Its marginally possible that you have a PC infection, although if the PC itself is responsive enough I'd rule that out.

 

Have you spoken to your ISP, it does seem as though you have some kind of line fault. 0.08 Mb/s is silly slow, and no ISP should be that slow. The fact that you have 0.38 upload really does indicate that everything else is ok and your ISP need to be informed.

[theladyisatramp]

Thanks! I'll contact my isp provider after the bank holiday then, i imagine they'll be closed tomorrow. I'll keep you posted. : )

[theladyisatramp]

I just did a test, upload is 0.36 Mb/s, and download is 1.52 Mb/s, and the internet is functioning normally.

[Tootech]

Thanks for letting us know.

 

I guess we can take it that Virgin Media solved this problem :)