Does anyone know why my computer runs slow. It's especially slow on ebay. I have a celeron 2.2 gig processor and 1 Gig of ram. I have neighbors that use the same cable modem and their's are faster. Some neighbors only have 256 Meg of ram.

 

XP or Vista?

256 is low even for XP
1 Gb is not bad
but 2 GB for XP is the sweet spot


what browser you using?
IE, Firefox or ???

most of the time a slow computer has one of a few things going against it

either multiple processes ( applications ) running at the same time

viruss , adware or malware running,

a firewall configuration ( especially if you got a double firewall set up )

and lastly you connection, have you got to dslreports.com and run the speed test ( under tools section ) to see what you actually getting speedwise?

 

AV programs like McAfee or Norton are also notorious for slowing down computers. A light weight free AV will give about the same protection without slowing things down.

 

I'd be looking at AV stuff as well. Esp when you say things like E-Bay are slower. I believe some software actually looks at all the clickable links on a page and won't load them til they are checked? And you know every page on EBay has a ton of links.

Use Task Manager to see if something is eating up a lot of resources/memory/CPU.

 

I am using xp. I donot use any anti virus programs and donot have a virus because i started with a fresh hard drive. I checked task manager also. It seems like ebay is always running slow, but on both of my neighbors computers ebay runs ok. The speed of my cable modem is 1838.7 KBPS and sometimes higher.

 

Well, the speed isn't the best..but it depends on what your cable service provides. Mine wasn't much better before they upgraded the system here.

You don't use any AV but you don't have a virus or malware? Wanna bet?

Most computers are hit within minutes of getting on the Net if they don't have some sort of protection.

You said you checked task manager, what did it show?

 

these days you need an AV program ... if you want a free one look at:

AVG

AVG Free has a Virus scan and active protection but that is it. Keep it up to date!! everyday.

Also look at:

Spybot S&D

Spybot is free and is good for active protection and scanning for adware and crap you pick up online. run a scan every few weeks and make sure you keep it up to date.

Protect your software!
Slow downs on a PC are %80 of the time a result of software not functioning right or being bogged down by adware and viruses.


If you are sure your PC is running slow due to hardware I would look at the hard disk first. It could be a a hard disk getting full ....or a hard disk in first stages of going bad. Also if you are comfortable see if your CPU is in fact running at the right speed. Either in BIOS or in Windows. Sometimes a board will reset to defaults and will down clock the CPU.

 

you are direct to the cable modem? no firewall, preferably a hard firewall ( like a router ) over a soft one.. is MSN messenger turned off in the services area ( control panel ---- administrative tools --- services )

check to see what services are running and those that are set to AUTO
some you might want to turn off.

 

gotta be running an anti virus program, rule number one, "thou shalt not browse unprotected". there are a couple of great free av programs out there. check filehippo.com or cnet.com for the lastest downloads (no promo, there's other websites that have offer free downloads as well). I'm betting you've got some malware/adware sucking up resources as well. spybot search and destroy is a good way to go and can be found on the web sites mentioned above.