I seem to be having more problems, hangups, and freezes the past year. I figure its just because my 7 year old E-Machine with an AMD 3200 processor and a Gig of ram is just getting overwhelmed by all the feeds attached to websites these days. it takes longer to open windows, the browser hangs up and stuff like that. after browsing a while, it just likes to sit on website found, waiting for reply. so i restart AOL Browser, and it clears.
But just for fun i tried a couple of these connection speed tests. results are different. like i have comcast, and their tester says i get better than 13 MBPS download speed and 3.7 MBPS upload speed. seems pretty good. I guess they pad the results.
i used speedtest.net and mine is 12 and 9. i have been using comcast for only a few weeks now. i went from dialup to comcast blast and DO NOT miss dialup. i mainly got it for kids to play X box live. i can be surfing on 2 computers and kids hosting games and no lag whatso ever. LOVE IT
Ken it may also help for you to clear out your browser history, cache, and cookies too. When you don’t clean the background stuff the web browser has to read through all of the old stuff to find the right stuff to display.
It’s kinda like saving alll of your Christmas cards in a shoe box for 15 years and then trying to find the cute one Aunt Emma sent you in 1997.
I have always tested this since I had dsl then Comcast than fios and now back to Comcast. Currently I am getting 58-63 down and 9-13 up. It’s super fast. I too play games when I’m not looking at the tank lol. I use Comcast.net and speakeasy. And have used them the entire time. So far it’s the best service I’ve had with problems and such I am very particular about it. I do have problems but I notice every little thing. I have 8 devices off of it too. Ken it sounds like you have a memory problem. With most websites now you open a lot of stuff and with windows it will run many programs to open one this could be slowing you down. I am no computer expert this is just what I’ve heard.
there are some free shareware programs you can d/l and run to clean up your machine. I had similar problem and used these and it has helped alot. Here a re a few. All free
CCleaner…cleans up your registry
Search and Destroy…looks for and removes adware from your puter
Malwarebytes Anti- Malware
Also just recently I opened the case and gave it a good cleaning. Running much faster now.
Comcast Wideband tier caps at 50mb down and 22mb up and is $100 a month on top of other services, not worth it to average users, although I know a guy who uses every bit of it lol!
Yeah, Ken, an upgrade may be in your future. Most systems are running at least 2 gig of RAM nowadays due to both Operating System size/memory consumption, and the amount of information available to be processed at any given time. Windows 7 hogs nearly a full gig when running IE-9. If you are interested in upgrading any components on your system, I’d be happy to help . . . it’s my other hobby. lol :GEEK:
Try running Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox. Both browsers are more streamline than AOL, less cumbersome, and easier to use. You don’t need both, but they feel very different from one another, and it comes down to personal preferfence. With Microsoft pushing Silverlight and attempting to shut Adobe Flash out of the market, IE-9 isn’t the preferred choice for most people regarding browsers due to its integration directly to the OS (which is why I prefer Mozilla or Chrome).
Start - highlight computer - right click - properties. Windows experience index test will give you a general indication where your computer is hanging up, and it’ll probably give you a low score on your RAM.
Some of the programs out there that “clean your pc” seem to be counterintuitive . . . running more programs will only slow down your computer . . . but that’s just me. Also, I’m hesitant about cleaning the registry with programs like C-Cleaner . . . sometimes important information regarding updates, backups, and restore points will be altered slightly if you mess with the HKEY registry improperly. The registry is like a digital fingerprint for everything your computer has done, and often times that information should not be changed.
Sneaky startup programs will open every time you start up your computer, and you can turn them off by running “msconfig” in the command/run bar. Go to the startup tab, and deselect everything you don’t want to run, but make sure to keep your antivirus/malware programs active. This action doesn’t prevent these programs from running, it only prevents them from opening upon startup (often when not needed) and hogging valuable memory.
Don’t forget if Ken upgrades his ram, the price of alot may be tempting but 32 bit windows will only recognize 2.7 gigs of ram max even though bios will “see” 4g
You can see your total available if you go to task manager/performance, even if you have 8g installed it will probably say something like 3.5g available.
Ken you are getting a mix of info, you say your system is 7 years old, can you let us know the Operating System, I would assume Windows XP but we all know about making assumtions…
Before looking at upgrading and such, we would really need to know what you do with it and what you want to do with it, if all you do is browse the net, you can do that just fine with what you have and just need a little house cleaning.
Another thing to look at would be your network card, what type is it?
I also have comcast and it wasn’t up to par on speed, they came out and figured out that the cable in their outside box still had an old HBO filter snapped around it (the old signal had HBO already in it and they put a physical blocker on the out side of the wire). This was hindering my signal.
I was trying to make a funny with my Windows 95 comment, considering it only took 24ish Mb to run, and typical systems had 256Mb of ram installed, max of 1.5gig. Remember those 128Mb jump drives? Those could hold SO much information back in the 90’s, about 30 games (Oregon Trail anyone?). lol
Oh boy. now im getting confused. yup i have windows XP, E-machine with AMD 3200 athlon processor, 1 gigram 160GB hard drive but its 87% free. I dont keep a lot of stuff on it. Im real regular about clearing cashe, defragging, and spyware. I run AdAware for spyware protection. and the mcafee suite. and windows firewall. and i clear all these things several times a week. they clean registries too so clutter is low.
It sounds like my connections speed is ok, I do have to use a router in the back room and usb adapter on the puter because there is no cable where i have the puter desk. its an older linksys router, 54mb speed. so that should be fine. all that other stuff is greek to me. I like AOL because thats what i started with. im not good at migrating to something else. and bringing along my library of links.
I think its time for an upgrade too. opening news pages on like huffington post(aol news link) and cnbc takes 30-60 seconds before the page loads and settles down so i can read the dang article. they have too many video feeds and ads running on the page for the processor to load at once. i guess it goes in a line. so it dithers around while it starts all those things up. i guress my old puter can only handle one thing at a time.
I dont mess with settings and stuff very much since I got no idea what the heck they mean, or do. mostly i just browse for info. so i dont need gaming speed or bells and whistle.
Hey, while yous guys are listening. there is one program i have no idea what it does or if i need it. Microsoft Framework.net i seem to have 4 or 5 revisions of it that keeps updating on auto udate. over 100 mb each. What the heck does that do? can i just keep the latest verseion and delete the rest?
i got a mac mini for sale.
2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
4GB memory
Dual 500GB 7200-rpm hard drives1
Intel HD Graphics 3000
OS X Lion Server
OS X Lion
i7 is a really good processor i paid over 1200 for it selling for 900.
dunk is right mac will never give you problems
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