BleepingComputer.com: Internet crawling, even after reloading XP

Greetings,

I'm having one heck of a time with my Dell laptop. It is painful just to post this topic. I sure hope someone can help.

7-10 days ago, my FIOS internet speed just dropped like a stone. At Speakeasy.net Speed test, I barely crack 1 Mpbs download speed. I used to get over 10 Mbps. My other laptop is working fine having no speed issues. Problem makes the browser max the CPU at 100% whilst it is slowly downloading data.

System is Dell C810 laptop, 1GHz P3, 512 MB RAM. Using DLink wireless adapter or hardwired does not matter.

I have two disk drives. One with Win2K, one with XP. Does not matter which one I boot with as the slowness persists with either.

Using Avast AV. Turned on or off does not matter.

I even formatted and reloaded XP. Did not help.

Firefox, IE and Chrome, does not matter.

New user account has same problem.

Oddly enough, Software updates seem to download at normal speeds. Pinging Verizon.net gives 76ms response.

I am out of ideas and about to sail this laptop out the window. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks!

Tim

Seems like a hardware issue if you reinstalled windows already- but- try using task manager or process explorer to determine what is using your cpu- If it is running at 100% then cpu 'load' is likely your download speed problem rather than the other way around.