Firefox problem: Internet is slow and intermittent

I'm posting this here because I posted this problems over at the Firefox problems but I haven't find a solution yet, so maybe somebody here knows what should I do.

FYI, Windows firewall is always off and my antivirus is AVG.

 

Try scanning for malware & spyware first.

I recommend "Spybot S&D."

 

I've done that but nothing was detected. It's not Firefox per se that's being slow, it's the Internet connexion.

 

I think it might be Zone Alarm slowing you down, you might want to uninstall it to see if it's the problem, or try going into safe mode with networking.

 

If you suspect firefox 2 is the problem, you can give the portable Firefox 3 beta 5 a go and see if that helps. I have just got my first impression of Firefox 3 beta and FF 3 has definitely improved alot over FF2. I recommend portable version because that way the FF3b5 don't affect your FF2 installation, so you can try it out safely.

 

Thank you but there are several add-ons that I need to use and are not compatible with FF3. In the meantime I'm using both FF and IE.

 

Have you tried my suggestion about ZA yet? AVG web shield may be the cause too if you have it on.

 

I did uninstall ZA and but FF is still intermittent. I don't know if it was because I had uninstalled ZA but a few days after that (not immediately), the drops started to decrease but they still happen, so I installed it again and I didn't notice any change, I mean the internet connexion still drops but not as often as it did before.

I didn't do anything with AVG, should I go ahead and uninstall it too or is there a way to turn off the web shield?

 

Well for AVG 8, it's pretty easy.

 

If you don't have AVG 8 then uninstalling it would be a good idea. Also, instead of using ZA since you have vista, use Comodo Firewall Pro. That will at least decrease the drops and increase your security.

 

Thank you, I'll try installing Comodo and also switch off the Web Shield.

Another update:

As I said before, the Internet problems only occur with FF, not IE. The weird thing is that since I have the IE Tab extension installed, I can click on it from FF and the FF tab will switch to a IE tab within FF, and the page will load up immediately.

Since the problem is so intermittent, I don't know whether the IE Tab is correcting the FF problem, or if IE can find a "way out" even if it is through Firefox.

 

If only turning off the web shield of AVG doesn't work try uninstalling it completely. Also, when installing comodo, don't install Defense+ yet.