Dial up X.x

[Dragyn]

I really dont know if this is something anyfur can help me with, but My dial up has been slowing down to the point where it cant even send a 50kb pic on msn. Ive been told to back up all my data then reinstall XP but neither my laptop or desktop came with a disk for XP. So I was wondering if Theres any furs with tips to get it from DEAD to Slow again, before I decide to take a hatchet to my comp again >.>

[Alex]

It might be something with your firewall, or other internet settings. Keep in mind dialup is always going to be agonizingly slow, but it might be you're just noticing it at certain times more then others.

There's really no need to do a complete reinstall, that's totally unnecessary.

Is your connection slow on both your laptop and desktop?

[Benjamin]

Yeah, I don't see any sense in reinstalling the entire OS for that. You might want to try running some programs like Ad-Aware or other such things that'll sniff out and remove any possible spyware programs. That may help you out a fair deal, since some of that crap does try to make use of your bandwidth and track your transfers and whatnot.
 
Benjamin

[Dragyn]

I know that dial up is slow but on both my laptop and desktop its been getting slower and slower

[PyroVulpes]

As Ben said, try running something like Ad-Aware on both systems. Spyware and adware can really kill your bandwidth.

Also, Windows XP has a wonderful little feature called "System Restore". (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore) I'd try restoring the system back to the earliest restore point possible before resorting to reinstalling windows.

[sulli]

i would only do the system restore as a second last resort, it does fix the problem, but you can lose a lot if u are not careful. also check your clock once u are done, iv had it were i had toi restore, then nothing worked, i looked at my clock and it was a few days behind.

when is the last time i defreaged adn scaned disk your drives??. that is another cause for slow. speaking of witch, i got to do that to this things again.....

[Mobile Suit Bunny]

Is it just your MSN that's been slowing down or is it your net experience as a whole?

I never have luck with MSN file transfers. They're always slow as molasses for me, regardless of platform, provider or recipient, I have no idea why. I prefer to think I just have some sort of MSN Death Ray tracking me from orbit.

[AshleyAshes]

Is it just your MSN that's been slowing down or is it your net experience as a whole?

I never have luck with MSN file transfers. They're always slow as molasses for me, regardless of platform, provider or recipient, I have no idea why. I prefer to think I just have some sort of MSN Death Ray tracking me from orbit.

Seconded.  Sometimes it's like MSN just decides to suck for file transfers some days but it's fine other days, and that's with a cable connection.

If your overall internet connection is slowing down however, you may want to look at the telephone lines.  The more noise between you and the ISP on the phone lines, the more data that gets lost and has to be resent, resulting in slower connections overall.

[Aaeden]

The most likely causes for slow dial-up...

- Adware / Malware - Follow the provided instructions to check for the presence of these.
- Full-Fledged Viruses, typically Trojans - Get a good anti-virus program. Some Adware / Malware scanners will detect Trojans as well (typically the bigger names).
- Shared Network - It's not likely, this is true, but are you using multiple computers on a network? Typically other computers running on a network connection using dial-up will slow everything to a crawl.
- Background Software - Make sure there are no programs running in the background like P2P software set to upload / download, or software that makes a habit of updating itself regularly.
- Windows Update - This is a big one, but typically it's set up to not work automatically, and if this is something recent that was not happening before, unless these settings were changed, this is significantly less likely to be causing the issue.

Good luck!

[Dragyn]

Well thank you all for your help, Im pretty sure ill be able to figure something out from all that