Internet very slow, takes 5 minutes to bring a page up!

[Sossity]

I turned on my PC, & everything seemed ok until I tried to open Firefox, it seemed to hang, & would not open, I clicked on the Firefox icon in the task bar below, & I would get an hour glass symbol showing that I have clicked on it, I would then hear the hard drive making it's usual operating noises, & then nothing, the hour glass would flash a little but no Firefox.

I have had this problem before, & so I have just shut the computer down & restarted, & this would help, after starting up again & clicking Firefox, it would start up after I clicked it icon, and act normally.

It was just as I was shutting down that Firefox finally began to slowly bring a page up, but by then I had let the computer shut it self down.

Does anybody know what could be causing this? it seems shutting the PC down & starting up again seems to fix it, so far that is what I have to do.

I have also found that my avast virus software sometimes needs to give me it notification update that it has updated it's definitions before I can get the PC to respond normally to clicks & commands, such as opening Firefox.

I have had this happen, everything runs a bit slow, & hangs, until the avast message pops up, once this has happened, things run more normally.

Also, my mother posted some stuff on Facebook, & now something called ABBY FineReader 6.0 Sprint it is always in the bottom task bar as well, & don't know how to get rid if it or if it using resources running in the background. I try to click on it in the taskbar, but it just moves it around, I cant seem to click it directly.

One thing I definitely do not like is when programs start running in the background that I don't know about, they seem sneaky this way. I like to know all that is running on my PC, & have control over what runs & what is needed in the background.

[kpmedia]

Go to Start > Run and type "msconfig" to bring up this window:

msconfig.jpg

There's two tabs to pay attention to: Startup and Services

Note: I'm using a Windows 7 computer right now, and the window may appear slightly different in XP and Vista. But the process is still the same.
And then about half of my startup items are disabled. What you see here in the image are for Intel hardware and a few purposely-installed apps.

Do NOT randomly disable anything. Only disable services and startup items that are definitely related to something you don't need or want running. For example, Google Update is useless. Toolbars are useless. Abbyy Fine Reader is an OCR text-scanning program, and there is no need for it to run in the background 24/7.

If you're not sure what a process is, always run a Google search on the filename or process name.

Tip: On the services tab, sort by Manufacturer. Leave everything from Microsoft alone. The others are fair game.

If you're ever feeling aggressive on resources, there's a number of useless MS services running that can be disabled. For example, if you're not logging in remotely to other computers, or allowing that computer to be logged into remotely, none of the RDP related servers need to be enabled, and will conserve RAM.

What you're describing is something using too many resources.

You can also hit CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to launch the task manager, and view the RAM and CPU being used by any process. It's amazing how greedy web browsers have become. If that computer is older, then you can't run Firefox 8 or later very well. Firefox 7 was the last version to really be widely accepted as low-resource safe.

Look at my current system:

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VirtualBox is open, with a Windows XP session running inside of it, with a few open programs. Yet it somehow needs less memory than Firefox with 10 tabs? It's almost ridiculous. These days, I need RAM for using a web browser more than anything else on the entire computer, and that includes Photoshop with concurrent open multilayer documents.

Chrome hides the fact that it's a hog by showing each tab as a separate resource. But it's using more than Firefox.

This systems has 6GB, so I'm not too bother by it. It's just saddening, really.

[Sossity]

Thanks for the screen shots, I went in & tried to remove some services & start up, I then got a message of access denied, i need administrative privileges, & asked me if I wanted to restart the computer or restart later.

I was logged into an administrator screen.

When I turned on the PC again, & a message on the screen read that I cannot make changes, & offers or tries to make me select all the services again.

[lordsmurf]

You'll have to be logged in as the main user with admin privileges.

Home users should not have the computer set up to deny access to admin tasks unless they have the skill to manage user permissions.
Whoever set this computer up didn't do it very well.

[Sossity]

Is there any way to fix this administrative permissions problem?

my mom set up the computer when she 1st got it, at that time she was the "techie" in our home as we had never had a home computer, but she had used pcs at her office, & the rest of the family had no idea how to use a computer.

[lordsmurf]

What user are you logged in as currently?

In Windows XP, the Administrator account may not be listed on the login screen.
If it's not, reboot into Safe Mode (press F8 when Windows begins to boot). The Administrator account should appear on the login screen.

1. Sign in as Administrator. You may or may not need an admin password.
2. Right-click on My Computer, click on Manage
3. Expand Local Users and Groups (+), click on Groups
4. Double-click on Administrators, click on Add
5. Enter the account name on this machine that you want to assign administrative privileges to, OK back out.
6. Reboot.

Your account should now have administrative access.