Sudden insane slow down of internet.

[UndertheBoredwalk]

I have new laptop (well a few weeks old) and a 50MB connection. All of a sudden (about 2hrs ago) my internet has ground to a halt.
It's taking minutes just to load a page. I've run AVG scan, Ad-Aware scan, defragged, cleared history, cache, etc and checked with isp that theres nothing at their end, all to no avail.
Am currently trying to download Spybot S&D (am desperate for anything!) and it's downloading at 1kb/s on a 50MB connection

Does anyone have any suggestions? before i lose the plot completely and throw laptop through window!
It may take me a while to reply, but I haven't gone anywhere! lol
Oh I'm wired at the moment aswell, so there's definitely no wireless issues.

Forgot to say, have tried three different browsers and all are the same, and I have tons of free space on my hard drive so I'm not clogged up either.

have you tried re-setting your modem?

I have had a similar problem so am bumping this thread for you!

Yeah have reset it 3 times so far, I had stern words with it the last time aswell, mostly of the four letter type

Since it is so severe I reckon something is wrong at your end. Can you reboot the router? I'm not sure what hardware you get with cable, but I imagine there's some kind of box between you and the net.

I'd guess that's Virgin Cable broadband. Not sure the current position, but they do cap people generally at certain times but not that much.

They 'may' also have brought in severe caps on individuals who have 'used it too much'. I don't know for sure they do that yet, but some places do. That does seem extreme even for that.

cross posted. Since you have tried all that then you better get back onto the ISP

have you tried firefox? is it only on mn?

Yes, I've been been 'throttled' before by virgin, when I was on a lower speed, the most they throttle though is 75% of overall connection speed, and they haven't introduced it yet for the 50MB connections. So def not that.
Am off to reboot router, again I may smack it this time aswell..you never know!

No it's the whole internet, have tried, firefox, IE and google browsers, all the same.
Have spoken to Virgin, they say my connection is running fine from their end so must be my computer

Will try one last reboot of modem, if that does nothing, I shall call back and demand they fix it
I've been trying to get onto a speedtest website to check my speed, but it's been opening that page for the last 10 minutes now

Is AVG the only anti virus system on your computer, or do you have one that came with the computer as well?

I had similar problems when a trial version of Norton was installed (not running), and I was running Kaspersky.

Yeah AVG all I'm running, still no luck with this. After rebooting modem, got a tiny bit faster but still taking over a min to open a page. Called Virgin back again, they keep repeating there is nothing their end, and to call back in 24hrs if it hasn't resolved itself

have you tried a disk defrag???

ours went like this last week, and phone stopped working. turns out was a bt problem- major external fault at the exchange they told us
phone is fixed, but internet is still slow. took them 4 days to sort.
try speaking with your supplier again....
we are in w m i d s btw in case you are in similar area and affected...

OK then have you checked what is actually running on your computer?
control alt del, Task Manager. Look at the processes (not the applications) - have you got another av process running? you wont recognise all the processes, but you can find out about them by entering their names in google and checking with a process database.
have you checked teh software list to see if another AV is installed (even if you arent running it)?
Control Panel, Add/Remove Software (in english, I think)

You sound fairly clued up, so apologies if this advice is ABC to you!

I would also consider installing some of the MS utilities like PortMon, FileMon, to see what processes are really using what resources.

Another thing to try is, can you reach the avg website www.avg.com? (not .co.uk) If not, then you may have picked up a virus or similar, that got round avg. you might try accessing the avg website from another computer to check if there is an upgrade that you need.

Thanks for all the help yesterday, I couldn't get back on again after last time (crosses fingers connection holds long enough to post)
I spent hours, trying to fix this last night, doing all kind of anything that entered my head. All to no avail.
Called virgin again this morning and just told them it was their problem and to get it sorted, 2 mins later 'oh yes major problem our end with your connection'

So engineer coming Tues to fix it, in meantime, shitey connection.
(very very tempting open wireless connection sitting there, someone daft enough to have a connection with no protection on it..tempted)

Ooohhh I now have snazzy super fast (compared to before dial up PMSL.
Been a long time since I was using this!
Virgin felt bad it seems and gave me some access