 Rank: King  Joined: 8/5/2009 Posts: 2,760 Location: lost in state of complete confusion
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Speeding up a SLOW INTERNET:
My dial-up internet has always been very slow, ever since I got my first computer about 12 years ago, through 4 different isps and 5 different computers. I just learned to live with it.
I have had a lot worse problems ever since I got an upgrade to my anti-virus, AVG 9.0, last week. In particular the green ‘loading bar’ in the bottom right corner would NEVER finish, and the wheel in the Firefox tab would just keep going round and round FOREVER, reminiscent of that kids’ song, ‘The Wheels on the Bus’…
I believe that my problem was not due to any one item, but to a compilation of little problems and conflicts.
I have done a lot of researching and some ‘tweeking’ and the difference is AMAZING!!! My internet function is definitely the best it has been ever since The Great Roll-Over, maybe the fastest it has ever been since I bought my first computer.
If yours is unbearably slow, I suggest you try the following tweeks that apply to your set up.
IN MYCOPPER:
If you are not concerned about children or visitors getting on the internet, always use ‘remember’ when logging-in to the internet, when logging-in to forum, and when logging-in to the Copper email service.
If you are concerned about children or visitors, I'd suggest still using the three 'remembers' above, but putting your entire computer under a password-protected user account where a person can not even work off-line without the password.
If your children must have access to the internet when you are not there to log them into a user account for your computer, you can use different passwords for your logging-in to the internet, logging-in to forum and logging-in to your (at)copper email.
I have not tried using different passwords. You might have to call Copper support to set up different passwords, or if anyone else does use different passwords, perhaps they would share that info and post it here.
IF YOU USE ZONE ALARM FIREWALL THIS IS CRITICAL:
You MUST check ‘remember’ and ‘allow’ for:
ISP Wizard Dialer
Dialer.exe
65.247.64.37:HTTP
ZoneAlarm reports this as ‘unknown’ and makes it look suspicious.
If it comes up in the Zone Alarm query box every time you first get on the internet after a re-start, then re-start your computer, and give this permanent permission in ZoneAlarm.
If you do not know if this entry has permanent permission, go inside of ZoneAlarm and make sure it does.
IF YOU HAVE THE YAHOO TOOL BAR and/or THE AVG (anti-virus) TOOL BAR:
Disable them. I was able to disable mine, while I was on the internet
in Firefox, in Tools (in the top menu bar) > options > main > Manage Add-ons,
but I had to then get off the internet and do a re-start for it to take effect. This will not harm the function of (anti-virus) AVG.
IF YOU HAVE (anti-virus) AVG 8.5:
Try to stay on it as long as you can get updates. The upgrade to AVG 9.0 is being pushed on users, but it is fraught with problems, as per the AVG forum site.
IF YOU HAVE (anti-virus) AVG 9.0, THIS IS ALSO CRITICAL:
Advice from the AVG techies on the AVG forum site:
Open AVG 9.0 in the ‘Overview’ panel
Click and open Link Scanner
Make sure the AVG Search Shield is enabled
Click box to disable ‘Link Scanner’
‘Save changes’
Hope something here helps you as much as it has helped me.  
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 Rank: Queen  Joined: 8/7/2009 Posts: 628 Location: Tennessee
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M Lawson:
I tried disabling the Yahoo toolbar and the AVG toolbar.
So far, it is excellent advice, but it's only been a few minutes, but it is much faster. I was getting a lot of browser not responding with either FF or IE.
Will continue to monitor this.
Thanks!!
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 Rank: Pawn Joined: 10/16/2009 Posts: 1
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Rank: King Joined: 8/5/2009 Posts: 2,760 Location: lost in state of complete confusion
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In addition to the above, I'll second the recommendation from Cyrus to use the free Ccleaner from Piriform, with one caveat. Each time, before you run it check your recycle/trash can. I often leave things there as a back-up when I'm redoing something. This ccleaner (and probably any similar program) will permanently delete everything in your recycle/trash can.
This is FREE, but they will beg for a donation and give you a newsletter for a $20 donation.
A hard-drive cleaner will do things like delete old cookies and if you have limited memory, you really should run this program at least once a week. Ccleaner will install in your computer and put an icon on your desktop, so after installation, you will not need to get back on the web site to use it in the future:Link to free Ccleaner by Piriform I'm now convinced that the problems I had around Nov 14-18 must have been caused by AVG-free. I've used AVG-free for over 10 years, but in the past few months it has given me repeated problems and I no longer recommend it to anyone. Kim Komando is now recommending the free anti-virus and anti-spyware from Microsoft and I'm going to switch as soon as I can get one of those 'round tuits'.
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