Many clicks to change page

I am on a number of RV forums and posted my problem. It was suggested I bring it over here because this was where the real computer knowledge was. This problem has been ongoing and very frustrating. The info below is cut and paste from my other posts on those other forums. Any help or ideas will be appreciated.

This problem is affecting my whole internet experience. I will try to explain what is and is not happening and what I have done to date.

The system is XP home edition. The browser is Internet Explorer V.6. and e-mail is Incredimail, Build ID 2001184, which is the latest.

I have discussed it with my ISP, I am connecting at 50.6kbps. ISP says they can see a problem, (not theirs, of course), Telephone found a line with "noise" and corrected it, hence 50.6 consistently. Gateway says all they can think to do is reinstall my OS. This I am reluctant to do, at least until I am confident there is not a simpler solution.

On to the "meat ". When I am connected and click on a link, it may or may not "catch ". sometimes browser "times out" before page is fully loaded. If I click again numerous times it will eventually "catch" and eventually load the page. It is also affecting e-mail downloads and uploads. If I am downloading messages, it may download 30% or 50% or any arbitrary %, and then stop. I can manually stop the action at this point and tell it to start again and it will complete the task. As for sending, It will not finish sending anything w/an attachment. It indicates it is trying and is at a arbitrary %, and that is far as it will go no matter what. A text message w/no background generally will send, but it may take 2 or 3 attempts.

It is reminescent of the old manual transmissions w/a bad gear. You would engage and start down the road and, POP, out they will come.

I have a feeling there is a setting that is incorrect or maybe it is a hope.

OH, BTW, I also removed and reinstalled the modem and drivers and checked Gateway's site for updated drivers, (there are none).

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I have no more hair left to pull out.

Generally, I can access any site eventually. Some seem to take more attempts than others. Sometimes it will not access a site no matter what and then a couple hours later it will go right thru.
As far as "noise ", I was only able to connect at 19.9 at one point. After over a week of frustrating interaction with SBC, I was able to convince them, 1) that it was my computer line I need checked, not my house line 2)That I did not need to know if there was a dial tone, I already knew there was, 3) It was not inside my house, it was outside on their lines. Once all that was established they quickly found the bad line and replaced it. There was a period of time that connection speed was declining, possibly 2-3 months. Could that have physically damaged the modem? Is there is a way to establish a bad modem? This is what I had hoped Gateway could do, but, best I could understand, (heavy East Indian accents), all they could think of is to erase my hard drive and reinstall the whole OS.



GHBiker

 

Welcome to the boards GHBiker
Do you have any adblocking software installed?
Have you tried using system restore, to a point before this began?
Lastly, you might try and see if perhaps URLMON.DLL is not registered correctly.

You can reregister URLMON.DLL by:

Clicking START and then click RUN.

In the space provided type:

Regsvr32 URLMON.DLL

Press Enter -or- click OK.


Just some thoughts.

 

Some other thoughts.

- Incredimail and XP seem to not get along well on many systems. I'd look for another option if it were me. If you say what Incredimail features you make use of and enjoy, we can suggest alternative applets that play nicer with XP.

- Your modem is probably internal and probably a Winmodem where much of the signal processing is done by the PC. They are a frequent source of headaches for the user. If you will be using dial-up for much longer, I'd strongly suggest you change over to an external modem. If you decide to go the external route, make sure to uninstall (via device manager) your internal modem, shut down, and physically remove it, before installing the external.

- Check your event logs to see if they are logging errors or warnings that are (or may be) related. Feel free to post any here you need clarification on. Easiest is to open an event, click the icon below the up/down arrows (sends a text copy to the clipboard) and paste it here.

- ISP says they can see a problem, (not theirs, of course), .., can you give any details on this?

- a general system cleanup couldn't hurt and might help. These things in this order:

• Open your browser, click on tools~internet options, and delete all temp internet files, cookies, and history.
• Open My Computer~right-click on your C: drive and left-click properties and do a Disk Cleanup. Let it remove all the items it offers. May take a while if this is the first time or if you haven't done it recently.
• Click start~run then type in cmd and OK. When the command window opens, type in chkdsk /f and enter. When you are told it can't be done now, answer Y(es) to doing it at next reboot then reboot.
• Right-click My Computer, left-click Manage and defragment the drive(s).

Glad you didn't follow the Gateway advice to reinstall the OS. That is occasionally necessary but as a very last resort and you aren't nearly at that point yet.

 

There are several XP services which can clog your bandwidth, seemingly randomly.

You can use the guide at Black Viper's site to turn off/disable the unnecessary services.

Spyware can also slow things down, sometimes dramatically. If you haven't already, download, install, immediately update and then run Spybot and/or AdAware. Read the help files to familiarize yourself with how they work. I recommend you use them both since each tends to find things the other misses. Let them clean up any spyware found.

Then, to be doubly sure, download and run CWShredder and run it (link to the download is near the bottom of the page). The symptoms you describe are also symptoms of the presence of CoolWebSearch.

None of the above will hurt, it will help at least to some degree and it might solve the problem you're having.

 

Thank you to all who posted. I will try all that has been suggested over the next few days and will let you know what transpires. As far as my PC knowledge, I just know enough to be dangerous to myself. I have thrown out temp files, cookies and anything else extraneous. Sys. restore was not a help in this instance.
Thanks again, will post again after trying these suggestions.

GHBiker

 

Threw out Incredimail, hunted every part of it and removed. uninstaller did not begin to get half of it. Immediately operated faster and smoother, but still dropped out.
Reinstalled driver for modem, and associated drivers from disc. Seems to have "cured" it.

It was a near thing, I had already loaded the gun.

Thanks for all the help I received here. You people are great!!