Problem with internet connection (is it my modem?)

[Aceofstangs]

To get right to my problem: My computer connects to the internet fine (56K dial up with Earthlink internet), but when i try to load any pages (on Firefox or IE) they wont load about 75% of the time on the first try. On IE, it just freezes (and says "not responding"), On firefox it will take about 15-20 minutes to load OR take 15-20 minutes to give a page saying that the website i tried to contact (any page) timed out.Some pages wont load at all, and some pages load on the first try. But even when they DO load, it takes up to 30 minutes to get them to load one page(and it does it for EVERY page of Every site.. even if its just going to give me a message saying it timed out).

I know(like on a few other sites i asked for help with other problems on) someone will tell me to quit being cheap and just go buy a New HDD instead of a refurbished one. Well, i cant afford another HDD now that i bought one. When i wanted to buy it, everyone told me it was a good deal, But noone objected.Soooo im stuck with it (and i dont think any of the problems were by the HDD... most of them were from Windows or all the crap HP bundles with the windows discs..or viruses)


Heres the back story to my computer:
i have a HP pavilon 512n desktop computer (its about 4-5 years old). It originally had a 5GB hdd (which i had down to about 512MB when i finally switched out for a new one). I recently installed a Refurbished Seagate barracuda with 160GB or so of space (144GB freespace). I also freshly installed Windows XP aswell as a few security updates.(i had to get a new HDD when my old one didnt have any memory and got Spyfalcon spyware on it)

Ever since i have done this its been haveing problems, I have fixed a few of them... but recently i have been getting this new problem (the one stated above).

Right now i have NO antivirus (i know, thats bad). Mainly because i bought and downloaded Bit Defender, and it made me delete Norton antivirus, but then when i try to load Bit defender, it gets halfway (to "Creating desktop icons") and freezes up..then i get a pop up saying it had an error and must be restarted.And thats another thing i dont know how to fix (and i cant email the company that made it to ask, because my internet isnt working.

Thank you for reading, and any help you can give.

I will have all replys forwarded to my email, because im not sure if i'll be able to load this site tomorrow.

[XOTREVOR]

Hello,

I would say.......

1. Make sure you have all the latest windows updates
You can get them here.....
http://www.gooyah.net/utilities/windows_update.html

2. Run Spybot search and destroy.
You can get it here.....
http://www.gooyah.net/utilities/search_destroy.html

3. Run Ad-Aware SE
You can get it here......
http://www.gooyah.net/utilities/ad_aware.html

4. Run CCleaner
You can get it here......
http://www.gooyah.net/utilities/ccleaner.html


Once you have ran all these program reboot your computer

Then.......

Run this speed test to see what you connection speed is
You can run the test here.....
http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

Let me know what your speed was and.....

and let me know if this helped, if not then we will go from there.

Thanks,

[Aceofstangs]

Hi, I tried the first thing, but after i get the popup for microsofts updates, it loads up and all it shows is a blue bar at the top that says microsoft and has a search bar, and below it has a scrollable box that has Microsofts copyright and link to its privacy statement...the rest of the page loads up to be blank(in between, where im sure the list of updates or whatever, should be.).

[XOTREVOR]

Ok, for the first think go here instead......

http://update.microsoft.com/microsof....aspx?ln=en-us

Then try the rest

Thanks