help w/ my dialup connection
 

i have a 56 k modem that until the last few days was working well. now all of a sudden my speed while downloading or browsing has gone from the usual 4k/ second or so to 1.5-1.8/second.... could you tell me some things that could have caused or are causing this? i don't have anything obscure installed, especially when it comes to the net... just IE, firefox, pokerstars, and a couple of messenger programs(aim and yahoo). thanks for the info.

The problem could be a slow time of day from the servers your downloading from. Check this link out and see if it will help.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/default.asp

do you have any spyware programs installed? if not you may want to check for spyware..that seems to slow down connections and HD speed also.

Check your connection speed. Maybe you are no longer connecting at 56K speeds due to a change in line quality. If you are connecting at 56K speeds which typically range from 44K-53K, you may well have spyware or a virus. I recently had a blaster worm infection on my computer which totally took over the internet connection. The worm cut my connection speeds in half while it shared out info on my computer. If you do not have anti-virus software, you could try housecall.trendmicro.com to check for viruses. If you find a virus you will need to search the web for how to remove it, or find a free antiviral program like avg antivirus or purchase an antivirus program. Virus or no virus, you could then you could use something like ad-aware from www.lavasoft.de or spybot search and destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/ to check for and remove spyware from your computer.

thx for the replies all... today its' working a little better. it might have something to do w/ the criticlal update for downloading on firefox i found and installed last nite.