BleepingComputer.com: The usual....slow,slow

Dell Optiplex xp pro IE8, sp3 and unfortuately, dialup

Just bought this from an ebay computer merchant.
No modem, so I tried a usb modem I had...too slow.
Then I put an internal modem I had in the 2nd of 5
slots available. What I have now are the following.

1) Browser only shows part of the link I'm at, like
yahoo.com is in bold, the rest of the link grey (see
browser pic attached). This is the same..bold/grey,no
matter what site I'm at. This doesnt seem right to me.

2) Dont know of modem size (56k,etc) or how to check..
old one I've had a year or so. Online it pulls 45kbs,
which seems normal for dialup, but when I go to another
bookmarked site, I get "internet explored cant open page"
and have to refresh-f5 each time to open that page.
Overall, most pages load decently after refresh, but I've
had previous computers using same dialups that are much faster.

This pc also has preloaded avg free on it that is running
all the time.

3) Questions are...

Should I get rid of the avg program?

Should this modem be in a different slot?

Is there a faster speed internal modem I should purchase?

Any other suggestions appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

1. AVG is actually pretty good. I used it for years but recently switched to Avast. Seems like it is less resource intensive
2. The PCI slot the modem is in should not matter
3. 56k is the fastest modem you can get and has been that way for many years. I have heard that it is against FCC regulations to have a modem faster than that. Something to do with putting too much power to the phone lines I think.

Try deleting the browsing history and clearing out the temporary Internet files. That may help.
Control Panel - Internet Options - under Browsing History click delete then delete all

Ok thank you.....just did the history delete.....here's what my browswer link looks like now...still the dark/grey link..
(attached) I've just never seen that before...that's ok, huh?

Assuming that you tell me this dark/light browser link is no problem, I've still got the previous mentioned problem...
I went to my email bookmark and the page just stares at me....wont open...refreshed twice-no help..page wont load.

Thats really odd.

Have you checked for viruses and spyware yet?
Try MalwareBytes AntiMalware
Download, update and run the full scan.

Its only about 6 meg so it wont take forever with dialup. Or you can download it on another computer and install it via USB drive or burn to cd.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, but I've
only had this computer two days and malwarebytes was
already installed when I bought it. Neverteless, Mbytes
was running when I went to check it, yet I did a
quick and full scan...no "bugs" detected.

And one more thing I'm trying to figure out....I've been trying to view some youtube vids..the site tells me I need
ie10 flash, but I have that already, yet when I try to run flash, I get only a quit option...attached image

Uninstall Flash using the tool at this link and then reinstall.






http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html

I have that uninstaller and have done that twice and still the same result.
Adobe's forum shows a LOT of 10 users complaining about this flash player and some of the answers
given to correct certain problems are way too technical for me.
I've searched the and didnt find an exact problem like I'm having, but many people seeking help
are stating flash doesnt work.

FOUND THE PROBLEM!!!!! There's a small dark square at lower left...I clicked it....it FINALLY showed and did install....works fine now...thanks for your time.

I think that square was the installer window...recalling my past experiences .

Louis

I think what he was talking about for the black square was the licence agreement at the bottom left of the installation window.

Christian

Yes, the small box was right before "I HAVE READ"......

Lot of people in adobe forum griping their flash doesnt work...possibly because it's 2.48mb on their
desktop or whatever, but not installed.

TRYING AGAIN...pc keeps cuttin off. Refering to my original post, I'm pulling 45kbs now with over 3 mil bytes, but as soon as I go to my bookmarked yahoo mail, I'll get explorer cant open page, then I have to f5 constanly and MAYBE I'll see my mail. A recent desktop I had before buying this pc, was NOWHERE as slow as this pc. Once in awhile, I get notices that my firwall might be blocking a port when I try to just CONNECT, so I turned off the firewall. I've scaned via malwarebytes
and the pc is clean. I've only had it a few days. I've done the cmd run/ipconfig /flushdns and reset winsock...nothing makes a difference. Extremely frustrating.....not just that it's slow...I expect that from dialup, but THIS slow and many times, taking 4 or 5 tries just to log on without seeing messages to try again....THAT'S frustrating.
Suggestions please and thanks for your help

I bought this laptop off of ebay as well. You may want to try defragmenting the harddrive, uninstalling AVG free(bc it slowed down my computer) and get Avast!, then also maybe use CCleaner on it as well. There may be temp files or internet cashe or something slowing it down. Also, look at some of the processes on the taskmanager to see if there are processes that don't take up alot of cpu usage(process explorer is a free and good one to tell what processes belong to what program).