Computers drive me nuts! Been using them daily, prolifically, for 27 years, and they still drive me nuts. Gotta have 'em, though.

This laptop is one I reported on month's ago where I was getting an "imminent hard drive failure" warning. I did some things and convinced myself it probably is a false warning. Back up regularly. Anyway, still limping along.

But, this is bizarre. I have spent HOURS on the phone with my DSL tech support and my wireless router support. And now, I think it's the laptop, not my internet connection. What is happening is that over the past few weeks, my internet would get unusably slow. Wait, wait, wait for the screen to load upon clicking a link. Yet, it was sporadic. I could unplug my router, reboot and it might help awhile, then do it again.

Yesterday, I stumbled across something very interesting. When it hangs up, if I move my mouse up to the top of the screen and then down again, the page loads onscreen! If I don't do that, it's wait, wait, wait, like, a minute or two and it might finally load, might not. It appears as though it's loading normally, but the screen is not displaying? I dunno, I don't understand it.

Also, when I play a video, it's unwatchable due to start/stop, start/stop, it's like what you get when it's constantly buffering due to a slow connection. But... if I move my mouse around, it doesn't even have to be on the video image, just move it around anywhere onscreen, with constant movement, the video plays. Otherwise, it starts/stops, again and again.

Any clue? Yes, I'm ready to retire this 3 year old laptop but man, I am busy right now, I don't have time to change computers! Thanks for any help.

Try running from the cmd window (win+r) a utility called MSCONFIG.exe

Check your boot programs to see what is getting loaded when you boot the laptop.

I would clean it out temporarily to see if your problem clears up. You can select/deselet items to load at boot time one by one.

You will need boot programs like mouse, video, internet related. Anything else is "bloatware".

re-boot the machine without the offending programs until you find which program is the program consuming your cpu cycles.

You may also be a victim of either a virus, malware, or check to see if someone is stealing wiFi from you.

these can all slow down your machine.

Is it just the net that is slow? Or is your whole computer slow? If it is the whole thing, it might be that the IDE controller is stuck in PIO mode. You don't mention what OS you are running - if it is XP or Vista they are both notorious for reverting to PIO mode after a while.

To check:

Right Click "My Computer"
Select "Properties"
Select "Device Manager"
Open up "IDE ATA ATAPI Controllers"
Open up each "IDE channel" and go to the "Advanced" tab. Make sure all channels are set to "DMA" and not "PIO".

If you had to change anyone to DMA from PIO, you will need to reboot for it to take effect.

DocZ

Hi Bill

Type Broadband Speed Test into Google, and choose one of the free tests to find out your download and upload speed to see if it meets your ISP minimum, (Try at different times of the day) if not get back onto them.

If it passes the above test then there is probably something running in the background that stops when you do something (Move the mouse for instance)

As Al said it could be a virus or Malware, so make sure your anti-virus program is up to date and run a full scan.

Download and install Advanced System Care http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html and run it, (Create a Restore Point First) as this will clear out anything left after a virus scan, as well as clean up other parts of your system. (You can also access your start up programs from within it, which is easier and safer than using MSConfig)

Finally if the problem persists, right click the task bar and choose task manager to see what processes are using the CPU resources, to see if it can be disabled.

If the above finds nothing, try a different browser to see if this works better, if not than a clean re-install of the OS will probably be required.

Hope this helps

Bill

You guys are great, testing, testing, driving me nuts!