How to Speed Up Your Slow Internet Connection

Broadband internet connections have given access to instant information. However, slow internet connection problems are becoming more common. The speed of your internet connection is based on a number of factors. If any of these factors are hampered the overall connection speed will slow. Some causes of slow internet connection are beyond your control. However the majority of the problems that cause slow down can be easily eliminated with a few maintenance task. Some of the factors directly affected your internet net connection are modem speed, line quality, windows cache, security software and the quality of your internet service provider. The tips below will help you to tweak your system to get the best that your broadband has to offer.

Check your internet speed

You can check your internet connection by hover your mouse pointer over the internet connection icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. A pop up window will display your internet connection. You can also click the icon to launch the Properties window.

The graphic shows a connection that is using a wireless router so in addition to your internet speed, log on duration and status, you will also see the signal strength. You can get more accurate test by using online broad band test sites. If you are getting 80% of your ISP advertised speed, You are in good shape. There is usually a standard loss of 10-20% speed due to line quality. So if your are supposed be getting 1.5mbs and your internet speed runs around 1.25mbs, you have a good connection.

4 Steps to Speed A Slow Internet Connection.

STEP 1: REDUCE THE WEB CACHE

First step in speeding up your slow internet connection to tweak your internet options. To launch the internet options utility follow the the direction below:
1.Click Start
2. Click Control Panel
3. Double Click Internet Options
4. Click Settings under Browsing History

The task here is to make your web cache as small as possible. The less disk space your reserve for your temporary files is less data that your computer needs to search through. This action can easily award you a faster connection on the net.
5. Reduce the Disk Space to Use to the minimum recommended amount or as low as your desire.

STEP 2: CLEAR TEMP FILES

Deleting your web cache is a good way to speed up a slow internet connection. These files take up valuable resources that could be used to for a better net surfing experience. Remember that while you are online many files in the web cache are active. Cookies are loaded in your browsers and constantly update themselves. Also your computer will search through the temp files to match the latest version of a web page. So, by clearing the web cache you cut down on the work your PC needs to do thus speeding up your slow internet connection. Remember to shutdown the browser when deleting the cache. Because what files are open will not be deleted. Here how to delete your temporary internet files.

Manual steps to erase your temporary internet files.

1. Quit Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other web browser
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Internet Options.
3. On the General tab, click Delete Files under Temporary Internet Files.
4. In the Delete Files dialog box, click to select the Delete all offline content check box , and then click OK.
5. Click OK.

If you prefer not to delete all the files you can selective search each category and delete. The temporary files are broken up into six categories. To view your internet files follow the steps below:
In Internet Explorer

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Choose Internet Options from the Tools menu.
3. Click the General, Under Temporary Internet Files, Click Settings.
4.Click View Files
5. Delete selected files

The goal here is to cut down on the files your computer needs to search through. Alternate methods can be used to clear the web cache and other unnecessary data. Check out Clean Up A Slow Computer for more tips.

STEP 3: SPEED UP WEB PAGES

One of the biggest culprit of slow internet connections. Is your web browser's settings. When you log on to a web page, your computer is assaulted with data it needs to organize and present in an orderly manner. This information takes time to load. So, the more information the longer it takes to load. However you tweak a number of settings to decrease the time it takes to load a web page. By reducing the amount of animation and scripts. You can see drastic increases in your internet surfing.
1.Click Start
2. Click Control Panel
3. Double Click Internet Options
4. Click Settings
5. Scroll down to Multimedia.
6. You can reduce the options in order to increase speed at which web pages are loaded.

By restricting your browser to display only text is the fastest option.

STEP 4: CONTROL YOUR ANTIVIRUS

A slow internet connection is often a software related problem and not the fault of your ISP. Buying more bandwidth is always going to help. Slow down is a normal result of having security software like an anitvirus on your computer. The software must constantly update it files and signatures. All this information is logged in your computer. The majority of the information is placed in your registry.

When your antivirus performs a scan. It produces a log. This log can be up to 100 megabytes of information each. The registry holds all this info. The addition of the info is not the major problem. Its that the information is placed in many places in your registry. This causes fragmentation of files. Your computer's operating system must search through the massive files in the registry constantly. If the registry is error-filled, fragmented, or bloated with unnecessary and duplicate files, you will have major slowdown. Organize and keep it maintained, the problem will most likely be solved. You can scan to see the condition of your registry and see what resources you can unlock resources.Click Here to SCAN your registry

Also you should try to see what processes are loaded when your computer starts. Often the antivirus will check your email, scan, and even update at the same time. This may be occurring everytime you start up your PC. These acts can last as long as 3 hours. They may be running silently in the background without your knowledge. Maintain them by following the directions below or by tweaking the settings in your antivirus:

1. Open your Start menu.
2. Click Run
3. In the command screen type msconfig.exe
4. In the system configuration utility,click either service or startup
tab5. Uncheck all programs that you dont want to load win the antivirus is starting
6. Click OK

Eliminate Long Load Times and Excessive Buffering

Most players will allow you to alter their buffer settings.Below is an how to change buffer setting in Media Player.

You can change the default buffer settings in Windows Media Player, use instructions below:
1.Start Windows Media Player
2.Click the View
3.Click Options
4.On the Advanced tab, click Streaming Media(Windows Media)
5.Click Change to alter the buffer settings.

How to make Streaming Video and Media load faster.

There two aspects that are responsible for the slow streaming video. This is computer ability to "play" the file and your computer's ability to "receive" the file.

Step #1--Create More Resources to Receive the file

Receiving the video requires that you have the proper amount of space needed to load the video temporarily. The video will be loaded in to your Web Cache. If this area is full, the video will be slow streaming. To clear the web cache

1. Quit Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other web browser
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Internet Options.
3. On the General tab, click Delete Files under Temporary Internet Files.
4. In the Delete Files dialog box, click to select the Delete all offline content check box , and then click OK.
5. Click OK.

Step #2--Stop Choppy Playback

Choppy playback can be directly related to your computer's performance, specifically lack of free resources. You should streamline and tweak your computer to stop slow video streaming. One way to do this clean an organize your computer. So, if you haven't cleaned your registry in a while. This is necessary step to stop game lag, slowdown and overall destruction of your system's stability. Your registry holds all the information regarding updates, installs, un-installs etc. Each one of those events has a key. That key needs your PC's resources and free space. So, if you clean your registry, you make more resources available for speed. Do a registry scan if you got more than 20 errors you should clean it. Slow Streaming Video may be directly related to your corrupted registry, Click here for a FREE Scan!

Another way to stop choppy playback and slow video streaming is to Disable the use of hardware acceleration. Hardware acceleration can cause choppy PC playback, application crashes and slow streaming video problems. This occurs because the option forces all video players to conform to one setting. By disabling this option, the individual player can set based on the requirements of the file.

Disable Hardware Acceleration by using these steps:
1.Click on Start
2.Click Control Panel and Click Display
3.Select the Settings tab and click on the Advanced.
4.Click on the Troubleshoot tab.
5.Disable the hardware acceleration completely by dragging the slider to the extreme left.

In Vista

1. Click Start
2. Click Control Panel, choose Appearance and Personalization, click Personalization, click Display Settings, and then click Advanced Settings.
3.Under the Troubleshoot tab, and then click Change Settings.

Duplicating your Firefox profile

If you use several computers, then you’re likely familiar with the frustration of having to re-input your settings, passwords, bookmarks, history, extensions, and form auto-fill information into your new Firefox installation everytime you re-install your operating system, or get a new computer altogether (lucky you!). I recently got my hands on yet another extra laptop, and I thought of transferring my profile from one of my existing systems. Yes, you can download software that automatically does the backup and restoring for you, but where’s the geekiness in that? Real geeks do it manually–which is perhaps the most straightforward way, anyway.

So how do we go about with duplicating a Firefox profile?

First, open up your source (the original one, where you want to copy the profile from) profile in Windows Explorer. Let’s assume you only use one profile on your system, which is automatically named by Firefox as default, and that you use Windows XP. Point Explorer to:

[Windows installation drive]:\Documents and Settings\[Your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

You might have to first enable viewing of hidden files and folders and system files at TOOLS – FOLDER OPTIONS – VIEW. Simply uncheck the boxes that say “Hide protected system files …” and select the radio button for “Show hidden files and folders.”

You will see at least one folder inside, with this format:

XXXXXXXX.default

where XXXXXXXX is an eight-character code for your Firefox installation on that particular machine.

This folder contains all your Firefox information, including bookmarks, history, extensions, form auto-fill, passwords, and cache. You can already ZIP/compress and copy this onto a USB flashdrive or any other recordable media, or transfer via the network. Remember that this folder could get very large if you have a large cache of temporary Internet files, so you might want to clear your browser’s cache first.

Then, in the destination computer, make sure you’ve already installed Firefox, and opened it up at least once, so that the application would automatically create a new default profile for you. Then open up Windows Explorer and then browse to:

[Windows installation drive]:\Documents and Settings\[Your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

where you will see a folder named

YYYYYYYY.default

where YYYYYYYY is the eight-character code for that firefox installation.

Simply copy or uncompress the folder containing the original profile into this \Profiles folder.

Now copy the YYYYYYYY string onto your clipboard (so you won’t forget), and then rename that folder as you please (i.e., YYYYYYYY.default.backup). Then rename XXXXXXXX.default into YYYYYYYY.default. Make sure Firefox is not running while you do this, or you’ll get file access conflict errors.

Now open up Firefox, and voila! Your original settings have been copied. Do check some of the options, though, as some extension and proxy settings may not have been transferred. But what’s important is that your new Firefox installation looks and feels like your old one. Now you can go and browse away to your favorite, bookmarked sites, not having to re-input all your URLs and passwords again.