Shoutbox

If your overall download speeds are "painfully slow"

I recomend you try both spyware scans and antivirus scans.

Online virus scan: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Spyware scanning tools:

www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

If that still doesn't change anything then contact your ISP maybe the problem is from there.

Also, a program called Tune Up Utilities 2004 has an internet connection tweak option (and lots of useful stuff) check it out here:

http://www.tune-up.com/


Tune up will only OPTIMISE your connection. If it is indeed abnormally and "painfully" slow, then you might have something killing off your bandwidth like a virus or malware (which is why i recommend the scans) or, and this is very possible, there might be a problem with your phone line or ISP... so i would check that after making the scans.