Thread: Painfully slow Internet - can't even type properly

Apart from changing to Chrome as a solution I found that there were many background programs running which had this effect.

The major issue looks like your hard drive is overstocked. I have heard that a hard drive needs at least 50% free space to work properly.
My guy suggested that a small solid state drive needs the data stored on a separate drive to be fully efficient. (Portable plug in unit perhaps).
Defragging also needs a lot of room to work properly as it moves stuff around while it is working.

Hope this fits in with your thoughts.

Loyd

Hi Lloyd, yeah I do have all my data on an external drive - just keeping the system stuff on the C drive.

It's definitely the add-ons - everything is perfect atm (no longer in safe mode, but have disabled them all and starting them up one by one).

I still don't understand why Skype.exe and Dropbox.exe think they should be running......

Hi FF,
Not to good on Puters, & most likely silly questions.
Mine was slow a while back.
Went to history, cleaned that out.
Went after Spam, surprising how many are there, gone.
Have a lot of Surveys coming up.
Went to Add & Remove, a few there I didn't know, Gone.
Hey, all of a sudden, much faster, less than 30 Secs. & it is all working fine.
Not sure if you have tried that, but I bet you have ???.

Apps like skype and dropbox and acrobat and....(lots of others) like to load on startup, as that way the time cost of loading the program is seen to belong to Windows; "Gee my PC is slow to start", rather than "Why does Acrobat always take so long to load?", and the corollary "Why is a simple pdf reader 90 MEGABYTES IN SIZE!!!!".

I regularly hit msconfig (or rather, the task manager in Windows 8.1) and make sure everything except the graphics card drivers and classic shell are not loading at startup. My average boot from cold to typing in my login time is around 10-12 seconds.

Thanks very much to code4pay for the tip (you deserve more pay ).

I started enabling the add-ons one by one (restarting FF each time) and all was good until I enabled Foxtabs. Then it went back to 40-50% CPU usage when I was doing nothing.

Funnily enough, this add-on hasn't been working properly for some months (top sites has disappeared - at least the contents has) and so had the little + on the right of the last tab (to open a new tab) which meant I had to use the + over at the far right, but that's gone too now This hasn't been a big deal because I use a tablet rather than a mouse, but now I'll just use ctrl t to open a tab.

Right now, while I'm typing this post the CPU is at 26-30% for FF, but I'm pretty sure that once I post it'll go back to about 10%.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Apps like skype and dropbox and acrobat and....(lots of others) like to load on startup, as that way the time cost of loading the program is seen to belong to Windows; "Gee my PC is slow to start", rather than "Why does Acrobat always take so long to load?", and the corollary "Why is a simple pdf reader 90 MEGABYTES IN SIZE!!!!".

I regularly hit msconfig (or rather, the task manager in Windows 8.1) and make sure everything except the graphics card drivers and classic shell are not loading at startup. My average boot from cold to typing in my login time is around 10-12 seconds.

So MS, does that mean I can end Skyp.exe and Dropbox.exe and they'll just load when I actually want them too (like every few weeks). They're not using any CPU but they are using memory and it all adds up. I've always been a bit chicken shight when it comes to ending a process .

Maybe I should do a screen shot of the processes that are running, stating those that I know I use (like VBscroll, ClickYesPro etc) and see if someone can tell me what i can end. There's a stack of stuff on my poor little C drive that "looks" important, but that I have no idea about. Pretty damn sure that there are pgms that can be deleted too.

Yes, they'll just load when needed.

(I've had the occasional app that will then re-enable itself because it feels it is so important. These apps I delete, permanently)

When you run Speedtest, what nodes are you testing from. Have found a majority of OS sites that I visit have been randomly slow lately.

Generally shows up well in Speedtest. I am in Melbourne so will speedtest to a node in Melb other than my ISP, typically 90MB/s down, 1.5MB/s up and a ping under 30ms. (Laptop, RJ45 cable to router/modem, cable internet). This establishes the capacity of my local and regional link.

Next I will test to a node in Brisbane or Perth to check national links, pings generally around 50-60ms, download 70MB/s, upload 1.25MB/s.

Finally I will test internationally, generally into California, unless the issue is with a site in Europe in which case I will go in that direction. Typical results for Cal are a ping of around 120ms, down around 10-12MB/s and up around 700KB/s.

A couple of times lately when US hosted sites have been poor to dead, I have tried nodes in the Pacific and been able to score 10-15MB/s downloads though to Fiji or Hawaii when I haven't been able to do better than 50-80KB/s download from the States. This is suggesting heavy usage of the links between the States and Hawaii, or some sort of link failure.

All above figures are from Dell 2GHz Core Duo XP machines, cabled to the router rather than WiFi. I run WiFi from portable laptops to router, but have an extra laptop cabled to router and acting as a server, printer sharer, and download machine.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you checked to make sure it's plugged in?
Brett I had similar problems a while ago. Not quite as drastic. I traced it back to FF so switched to Chrome. Much better. I've now deleted Firefox.

Brett, here's a handy site I use whenever my 'puter gets a bit "sluggish.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

You don't have to download and run Autoruns, just type msconfig in the box that opens up when you hit the start icon in the lower left of the screen.

Thanks GJ, that's very useful. I have now disabled Dropbox and Skype from Startup, and the Bluetooth as well (there's been a problem with that software almost since I purchased the puta, and I don't have a need for it).

This is a list of things in STARTUP and I would be grateful if someone could tell me a few of the things that don't need to be happening. The ones that I can identify that can be disabled are:
Things to do with Scansoft: OpwareSE2, pptd40nt, IndexSe..... These are for the Paperport software I no longer use, but don't want to delete
LaunchA.... for the Nokia PC Suite - I don't synch to the phone (because the Bluetooth doesn't work)
ItSecMng - more Bluetooth
ClickYesPro - no longer send out automated emails through Outlook
PcSync2 - more Nokia
BTTray - more bluetooth
SmartUI - more Scansoft

but there are a couple of others that I'm unsure about, but suspicious that they aren't needed:
SynTPEnh
SSMMgr - the Samsung printer has needed repair since about 3 years ago


Anything else unnecessary?





This is the list of SERVICES (excluding Microsoft because there are just too many, but I'll bet there's a few of them that can be disabled):



Looks to me like these can be disabled:
Bluetooth Service
MBAMscheduler and MBAM Service (both Malware Bytes)
Skype C2C Service (Click to Call is incompatible with FireFox, and I wouldn't use it anyway)

Have you by any chance installed CCleaner?

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

There is a free version and you can set it up to be seen when you right click on the rubbish bin.

I normally run it daily using the 'Cleaner' and the 'Registry'. It shifts a lot of you know what. It also helps to make scans quicker due to all the temp files and garbage being gone.

It won't be the answer to all problems but I find it good.

Ross

Originally Posted by old1955

Have you by any chance installed CCleaner?

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

There is a free version and you can set it up to be seen when you right click on the rubbish bin.

I normally run it daily using the 'Cleaner' and the 'Registry'. It shifts a lot of you know what. It also helps to make scans quicker due to all the temp files and garbage being gone.

It won't be the answer to all problems but I find it good.

Ross

I also run cc every day, trouble free computer, runs a dream and fast

I used ccleaner to fix a problem I was having with iTunes. Works a treat .
Just a tip: If/when you do find problem programs after you delete them use the search function to go looking for remnants that often get squirreled away in obscure locations. To fix my iTunes problem I had to delete EVERY reference to Apple programs .