Computer/Internet Tech Question

[Finny61]

My internet connection has sort of sucked lately but only in a certain way. Youtube, downloading, streaming has been for the most part not bad, not amazing but par. On the other hand surfing from website to website is annoying, numerous websites won't come up just the stupid internet server error, refresh once or twice and most of the time it works with some slowdown. SO why the sluggish speeds from site to site? Is that the internet server issue or my computer being a slow pain in the arse?

Thanks for any help.

[OBCT]

hmm... hard to say right off the bat. You could be experiencing spyware/adware or some other form of malware, or even a hijack.

What operating system are you running? What internet browser (and version; to find, click "Help" -> "About") are you using?

Give us the above info about your system, plus how long you've had it, and how recently these problems started occurring. Hopefully the CP braintrust can then offer some helpful suggestions.

[WindomURL]

My guess would be hijack, as your problem is evident when connecting to sites.

[Finny61]

Windows XP, 5 year old computer, Kaspersky Internet Security in place and they say all is good. I run a wireless network, secured (should be), using the 54G Linksys.

[Superflyer]

Could be the router itself. I have had that happen to me where it is trying to die and just slows stuff down.
Also just clearing your internet cache will help as well. Try installing spybot or adaware or any other malware detector and see if that helps.

[Vulcan]

Try downloading and using Firefox as your browser.

[sclitheroe]

Sounds like DNS timeouts.

Open a command prompt and run "nslookup www.yahoo.com"

Substitute yahoo.com for a couple different websites and run the command multiple times. I bet you will see timeout errors on some or all of your DNS queries.

[Finny61]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Sounds like DNS timeouts.

Open a command prompt and run "nslookup www.yahoo.com"

Substitute yahoo.com for a couple different websites and run the command multiple times. I bet you will see timeout errors on some or all of your DNS queries.

Yep. So what the hell does that mean now?
I ran spybot and found some minor crap, my speeds have been better tonight with a few hiccups here and there but usually a refresh fixes it.

[McG]

You don't mention your browser although i see firefox is suggested. i also recommend chrome - i have had improvements in speed over ie 8 (no matter what the propaganda says).

a 5 year old machine might need more than just a spyware scan...have you cleared up temp folders and that sort of thing?

finally, i would run a check against shaw's speed test (assuming you are on shaw) or on one of the other speed test sites out there. that will give you some indication of the speed of you connection without site specific issues.

[OBCT]

Yeah, Spybot definitely works. I rotate between it, Spyware Doctor, Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Windows Defender for my periodical cleans.

Another good program, as long as you use it with a bit of caution, is CCleaner. It'll tidy up your temp files, internet leftovers, and registry in fairly short order. Be careful not to get too liberal with the registry deletions, though... if done wrong, they can sometimes cause system instability.

[Azure]

Start using OpenDNS.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Finny61

Yep. So what the hell does that mean now?
I ran spybot and found some minor crap, my speeds have been better tonight with a few hiccups here and there but usually a refresh fixes it.

Which still points to intermittent DNS issues...run the command I posted, and paste the results back in the thread. Just go start->Run->cmd, and in the command prompt, run "nslookup www.yahoo.com", and also try a few other domains such as google.com, microsoft.com, etc.