Ok, I have a HP Pavilion laptop that slows down big time everytime I hook it up to the internet. The computer takes like 2-3 seconds to respond when click on something. I use Firefox and the internet is slower than dial up. When I disconnect the network cable the computer runs normal again. But my Sony Vaio laptop does'nt have this problem with the internet. I checked for spyware and viruses and it is fine.
What OS and how much ram do you have? I noticed a significant boost in performance when I went from 256 megs of ram to 768 on my laptop. By default, hp, dell etc come preinstalled with a ton of bloatware. What I did was reformat my hard drive and only installed the drivers and programs I needed/use. I believe this cut down my processes from 50+ to around 36 or so.
Sounds like you may be going through some kind of internet proxy. I don't use Firefox, but just Google 'firefox proxy' and you should get instructions on how to check for that.
What processes are running under your name? (ctrl-alt-del for Task Manager) Sort by percentage used and click on something that slows it down. What is the biggest hog? Or google all the processes (.exe) that are running under your name to see if you have a virus application running. {I assume that this behavior just started recently and that it used to be fast.}
I have Windows XP Home edition. 1.79 GHz, 896 MB of RAM. The computer just started acting up like 2 weeks ago all of a sudden.
I just checked and it is running 46 processes and CPU usage is 90%. My Vaio is running 37 processes and CPU usage is 20%
Like the previous poster suggested, check out the processes. Sounds like some spyware is trying to access the net automatically everytime it is connected.
Hate to hijack a thread but would hate to start a new one even worse. I went to Add/Remove Programs under my Control Panel. After removing the Yahoo! Toolbar and the Google toolbar and restarting my laptop the Yahoo! Toolbar is still showing up in Firefox. How can I fix that?
Lil Pun, I think that in FireFOX, the Yahoo! Toolbar is an extension, not an add/remove program thingie. Go to the Extensions and see if it's still there. Remove it that way. vaioavan, try disabling your virusscanner just for a few minutes and see what it does. Also, the Instant Messenger programs on your taskbar are constantly watching your Internet connections for new emails and new messages and new sign ons, so do a process of elimination with them and see how it goes.
First run task manager to see whether there are any mysterious applications eating up your cpu/network usage, and then try switching off Symantec Antivirus. Sounds like Norton/Symantec Antivirus is filtering your internet, background scanning, and your computer is probably downloading/installing updates at the same time. If it is Symantec, then just leave it running for a while and see whether it gets better once the downloading is done.
