Very slow internet connections in XP

Can anyone suggest a solution. I've just bought a new Sony Vaio laptop with wireless lan. I have a wireless access point connected to broadband and on another sony vaio (older) it works fine. However, this one runs at a ridiculously slow pace, with net pages loading slower than a dialup connection and the connection to my instant messengers often being lost.

I've only loaded Microsot Office; Quickbooks and Norton virus checker so can't really understand why it's so slow.

Are there any diagnostics I can run to find out or anything I can do to configure things better? It seemed to begin after downloading the MS Explorer updates but even after uninstalling them and using system restore to go back to the day I bought it nothing seems to work.

Any advice very welcome.

Gary

 

Gary, you might want to make a speed test using both of your Sony machines here, both download and upload:

http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/default.asp

Please post back your results.

This may give us a starting point to go from.

BTW, welcome to this board

Daddad

 

Turning off XP's unnecessary services does wonders. It takes a little time but it's well worth it in terms of better system performance and online security.

There are numerous guides online for which services to turn off, which to set to manual and which to leave on automatic but I've found Black Viper's site the easiest to read...and the links to explanations of each service are handy.