sluggish and dysfunctional internet performance

I am experiencing several problems that seem to be related to internet web browsing and reading:


1. With several websites, particularly news-based such as CNN, Salon, ESPN, I have difficulty opening articles when I click on the headline URL. Often, 30-60 seconds pass before the article of interest opens up.

2. On these, especially Salon, and other websites, such as eBay, when I try to view slideshows or multi-page articles or categories, I cannot advance beyond the 1st slide or page despite clicking on the advance-to-next-page arrow or the page or slide number directly.

3. Google email (Gmail) is my primary email provider. After logging on abd opening my Gmail inbox, Gmail performance is very slow. When I click on a message to open and read it, 20-40 seconds elapse before the message opens. I encounter the same delays when I try to open a message or another box of saved messages.

4. When typing messages to post to forums or comments sections of Salon or CNN or composing messages on Gmail, the cursor intermittently moves spontaneously and randomly within the message box instead of simply remaining on the last character typed. More bothersome is that the cursor sometimes moves about in such a way that a block of text comprising several sentences or even an entire paragraph or two is highlighted and the cursor is positioned such that if I type one more character without noticing the situation and moving the cursor back to where I left off, the highlighted text is deleted. These movements and highlights do not occur in predictable patterns, but occur almost every time I compose a message in one of these contexts. In fact, the highlight situation occurred twice while composing this message and I inadvertently deleted half of it both times.


These actions began occurring after my PC hard drive (HD) failed in Oct 2010 and I replaced it and reinstalled the Windows Vista Home Premium with my PC's re-install DVD and installed the automatic Windows updates. Two days ago, to attempt to correct these problems, I repeated the HD erase and OS re-install procedure again, including installing all additional automatic Windows updates except for the internet explorer 8 (IE 8) and Windows Live Essentials. I retained IE 7 as I simply prefer it over IE 8 and did not install Live Essentials as I do not use any version of Windows Messenger. I have not yet installed Windows Office 2007 Student and Home version, and after the failure, I added the freeware BlueScreenView, but otherwise the software content of my PC is the same as before the October 2010 HD failure. These problems did not occur until after that HD failure and replacement.

I am greatly appreciative for any advice, suggestions or pointers in the right direction to resolve these problems. I hope I described the problems clearly, but please don't hesitate to ask me for additional information if needed to understand the situation clearly. Thanks much for reading and any suggestions and advice.

 

A few questions to round out our inquiry:

1. What Intel chipset driver version are you using?
2. Are you keeping your OS separate from your data files? (partitioning)

and, most importantly:
3. Have you tried to access these same sites via a different browser than IE7? Say...Firefox or Chrome... to see if the lag happens there too.

 

firefox is defo faster than IE so worth giving it a go Firefox

 

Thanks for your suggestions. Here's the additional information you requested:

1. Intel chipset: Intel(R) PM965 Express Chipset as identified by the Intel Chipset Identification Utility.

Intel driver version as identified by the Windows device manager:
ACPIx86-based PC Driver Date: 06/21/2006 Version: 6.0.6002.18005

As noted in my signature, my GPU is nVidia GeForce 8400M GS and it has the most up-to-date driver.

2. I have never partitioned my hard drive (HD), so I presume I am not keeping my OS separate from my data files. I am a novice in many aspects of PC usage--is it beneficial to keep my OS separate from my data files? Can I ask for advice or pointers on how to separate the two and partition my HD?

3. I have not tried other browsers such as Google Chrome or Firefox. Until I replaced my HD in October 2010, I had not experienced the performance issues posted in this thread and had been using Internet Explorer from my first PC. However, I'm willing to try one or both of these browsers if you think they will resolve my reported problems and if other measures such as parititioning the OS from data files do not resolve them.

I appreciate your advice and any additional help with the information above.

Thanks,

 

Thanks. Hopefully the additional information will make it easier for someone to help.

The reason why I asked about trying other browsers is that we have to rule out IE7 as the problem.

So, please try a different browser and report back.

 

I just installed and used Google Chrome and indeed it appears to be much faster than IE 7 for 5 websites and Gmail. I am still encountering the intermittent random cursor movements when typing text in message and forum boxes like this one, where blocks of text of various sizes are sometimes highlighted and deleted when I keep typing without noticing and reversing the highlights. I admittedly did not believe that such a difference exists between Chrome and IE 7, but I cannot argue against the empiric evidence. If anyone has any suggestions to counter the intermittent randomly shifting cursor and text highlights, I'd be interested and appreciative. In the meantime, I may try Firefox, as I still prefer the bookmark management and formatting in IE 7 over Chrome and hope that Firefox more closely resembles IE 7.

Thanks,

 

What about IE8? Since you're troubleshooting, you might as well go all out.

 

I should have mentioned my hesitation about IE 8 earlier--this is admittedly nitpicky, but I have long avoided IE 8 because I believe IE 7's bookmark creation is easier and faster than IE 8 when creating and storing multiple bookmarks. I tried IE 8 twice a long while ago before concluding this. I readily concede that others may not discern a significant difference in this area between the two browser versions and that this may seem a trivial and even silly aspect on which to choose.

I appreciate the suggestions and help. Until you strongly suggested trying new browsers, I had long assumed that browsers did not have significant performance differences on the same PC, an assumption which of course was erroneous.

Thanks,

 

Primarily from curiosity, I upgraded my internet explorer (IE) from IE 7 to IE 8 this evening. Perhaps unsurprisingly, IE 8 eliminates much, but not all, the sluggishness I experienced using IE 7. Both IE 8 and Google Chrome (GC) also eliminate the difficulties I experienced with IE 7 viewing slideshows on Salon and other news programs. However, in some situations, IE 8 is still somewhat slow compared with GC. When viewing various Gmail messages, I notice a slight but notable delay when going from one message to another or when closing one archive folder and opening another. When I compose messages in Gmail or forums such as these, I also notice a delay of several seconds every few words, which manifest as the cursor freezing for those few seconds before the next letters I have already typed appear. I also encounter slight delays when opening and closing websites and URLs. These slight delays would not be noticeable if they were also present with GC; however, interestingly, I don't experience any of these delays with GC. GC seems light-fast when opening and closing messages and websites and URLs in general. With both GC and IE 8, during message composition on forums and Gmail, I still encounter the cursor intermittently repositioning itself on other parts of the message and highlighting text blocks of various sizes, which are deleted if I don't notice and keep typing. In fact, after composing half of this post, the cursor reposition-highlight situation occurred and I inadvertently deleted everything I had typed. This situation is annoying, as I waste time and effort having to re-type text and occasionally I cannot recall what I had typed before it was deleted. I also waste time because I have to type much slower than I usually do to watch for the cursor repositionings and text highlights before I inadvertently delete the highlighted text. If anyone has suggestions to investigate this, I would be appreciative.

In general, though, I am pleased and appreciative that changing browsers had rectified much of the sluggish performance while using the internet. I am curious about one other aspect--why is GC seemingly notably faster than IE 8 on the same PC under the same general conditions? I know it's probably simply because GC is a more efficient and generally "better" browser than IE, just curious if more specific reasons exist.

Thanks much to Anseio for the helpful advice and to all for reading this post and for any future information.

 

Browsers are designed to interface with the web differently. So, IE8 would be assumed to have a better interface than IE7, not to mention that new content may have issues on older browers. I'm speculating on all of this.

Though, GC may be faster than IE8, I still don't care of it. GC reports back your usage for marketing purposes, and I'm a private kinda guy. Each browser has its benefits. Pick the one/ones you like and enjoy them.

I'm glad that changing/upgrading your browser worked around your problem.