Hello, I have been experiencing an annoying problem with my internet connection. Evertime I go to startup a program that connects to the internet it takes an unusually long time for the program to start or get a connection...programs that used to come up instantly now take 10-20mins or even longer to start up. For example, when I start internet explorer it says 'detecting proxy settings' for about 5-10mins before my home page comes up, but then everything works fine. Likewise, when I go to check my email outlook takes about 10mins to send/receive mail whereas it used to take about 10seconds. Similar problems occur with every single program that requires an internet connection. Any advice on what might be causing this problem would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Virus? Trojan? Spyware? Any/all of the above can cause problems. Have you run a virusscan? Do you have Adaware and Spybot S & D ? Have you done basic system maintenance such as defrag, delete temp internet files, chkdisk, disk cleanup? How long has the problem been happening? Did you instal any new hardware/software recently? Do you have any yellow ?marks in devicemanager?

Hi Richard, Yes, I have run a virusscan and AdAware. Neither found any problems. I have also done a chkdsk and disk cleanup, and I clean out my temp internet files regularly. I don't see any yellow ?'s in device manager. This has been happening for several weeks now, I have not installed any new hardware/software recently.

One thing i am sure would help is doubling the amount of RAM you have. XP uses all of 128mb just to run its own processes without starting up other programs. Adding more ram should speed things up a lot. That alone would probably not account for delays of 10-15 minutes. I would also try a system restore to a time before the problem developed.

Thanks for your advice. I unfortunately can't do a system restore since my oldest restore point is after this problem started. And I know that 128MB is low for XP, but I don't think my RAM is related to this problem as it only happens with certain programs (and I have been using XP for over 2years with no major problems before this).

Try running system file checker. Put the XP CD into your CDROM and close it out if it auto launches. Then click on Start/Run/ and type the following: sfc /scannow click ok.

I'm almost out of ideas but just to shed further light on the problem for our more learned colleagues, are you using dialup or cable connection? Does the problem manifest only when you are trying to establish a new connection? Or if you are already running something like IE and then try to start up your email client do you get a delay? Have you tried spybot search and destroy? it sometimes finds things adaware may miss. Only other thing I can think of would be to uninstal and reinstal your modem. Probably won't help but anything is worth a try. In your original post you mention 'detecting proxy settings' Are you using a proxy server? Do you connect directly to internet or are you on a network and connecting through a server? If so the problem might be with network settings and not your system.