Internet Connection Very Sluggish

My isp is Earthlink. After I have been connected for some duration, it gets to where I cannot connect to the internet even though my dialup is connected. Email won't "mail" either. Most of the time, I can hang up and redial, and I can get on the internet for awhile again. Does anyone have an idea what may be my trouble. I am using IE and OE.

 

It sounds like you have lots of things running in the background. If you dont have a firewall, lots of folks here recommend Zonealarm. You would be surprise what programs are "talking" in the background. Also, Ad-aware for information gathering. Both are free.

 

Do you get this problem with another ISP ?
Does it only occur certain times of the day ie peak periods ?
It can be caused by the ISP having to many subscribers online at the same time and they sometimes reduce the bandwidth to allow for this causing a great slowdown in speeds or even grinding to a halt .

You don't say where you are located here in the UK we suffer with slow connections quite a bit.

 

I have Zone Alarm installed, but I never turn it on. I will begin turning it on each time, and see If it helps.


When I first got my computer, I used a different ISP, and I had this problem multiplied, but after I began using Earthlink, I never had a problem until about 4 months ago. Thaanks to both of you guys. That gives me some ideas to work with.

 

Molehill--In addtion to closing unneeded programs (using Control+Alt+Delete for example), cleaning out your Temporary Internet Files might help. Also, just rebooting if "some duration" means several days.