Computer Very Sluggish?

[Roger Shackelton]

I have a Pentium PC and I am running Windows 95. It takes from 3--4 minutes to load my home page when logging onto the Internet.

I often clear the history, internet files and also delete cookies.

I run Norton's system check once a day and sometimes run speed disk.

None of this helps the sluggish performance.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what to do to cure this problem. Windows 98?

Roger

[Jim Smith]

Sounds like the problem is with either your modem, phone line, and/or ISP, not your computer.

[Jim Phelps]

Changing to Win98 would probably do nothing to help. Do you have any photos on your home page? If you do, how big a file are they? I often see homepages with photos as big as 250k. This is waaaay too big, they should be no more than 40 or 50k at most for a medium-sized photo. If you're not sure about the file size of any photos, load the page then right-click over the photo, then click on Properties. It'll say the filesize in bytes.

[Donny Hinson]

Roger, how much RAM do you have? It's dirt cheap now, and if you've got less than 32 Megs, you could use some more. Do you defrag occasionally? This helps perormance, too. Also, are you clearing the cache files? How much space is left on your hard drive?

Also, you might disable Norton 'til you need it. As long as you're not downloading programs, or opening mail files, it's not doing anything...and it's using a lot of system resources.

[Jim Phelps]

Jim Smith is correct. It sounds like his computer itself is not so much the problem. It seems to be it loads his homepage slow. Webpages typically are very small files and use negligible memory and resources. Defrag, more RAM etc. most likely would have little to no effect on how any computer reacts online. One exception would be the video card. A good modern video card with 32 or 64 meg of RAM can significantly speed up loading of webpages. Roger, it might help us all to know if your computer is sluggish doing most everything or just when loading the homepage, as your first post implies. If it's OK except when loading webpages, you most likely have a problem with your connection, modem, ISP, inefficient video card, or your homepage is too big or could even have some incorrect coding. I've seen plenty of pages made with certain homepage editors that had plenty of problems, causing slow loading. What's the URL of your slow-loading homepage, and is this the only page that loads too slow, or do all webpages load too slow? <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 25 August 2002 at 09:16 AM.]</p></FONT>