Computers: Improve Internet Speed

If it is taking a long time to load your internet pages, it may not be a problem with your internet provider. You may need to do some easy maintenance on your computer. Here are some possible steps to speeding up your internet experience:

Flush the IP Addresses:
I like this little trick for getting rid of extra IP addresses that your computer accumulates when you go on the internet. After a while the computer has to churn through all these addresses before it can load a page and it takes such a long time for your pages to load. When I do this little thing to my computer it runs really fast.

Here are the steps that I used to find flushing instructions for the Vista operating system:

1. I first put the following words into Google Search: vista ultimate ip flush instructions
2. I then went down the list of sites and chose this website that looked like it would have good instructions: http://tips.instantvista.com/flush-the-vista-dns-cache.htm
3. When I went into the website, this is what it said:

"Flush The Vista DNS Cache, November 30, 2007

How to Flush or Reset the Vista DNS Cache. Having an Internet connection problems and nothing seems to fix it? Perhaps you have a corrupted DNS cache! Resetting or “Flushing” this cache is an easy fix that may resolve your problems.

This is how to clear the DNS cache in Vista:
Click the Start Orb
Now click All Programs
Then Accessories
Then Command Prompt
Right-click on it and ‘Run As Administrator’
Type the following and hit Enter: ipconfig/flushdns

After a few moments you should be able to see a confirmation window:
Windows IP Configuration. Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. That’s it!"**

(**Quoted information found at http://tips.instantvista.com/flush-the-vista-dns-cache.htm)
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We did the above on my sister's computer over the weekend and it worked perfectly. She uses Vista. It is very important to right-click on the command prompt and click on 'Run as Administrator.' This step is not used in the older systems like Windows 2000.
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If anyone needs to do this with in older system like windows 2000, you just type the following in the Google search: Windows 2000 ip flush instructions.

Here are the instructions for Windows 2000 ip flush from my personal notes:

1. click on start icon on the lower left of your desktop
2. click on run
3. type in: cmd
4. press the "OK" box
5. when the next window comes up you are in the dos (disk operating system) window.
6. The window title is "C:WINNT\system32\cmd.exe.
7. Inside the box you will see the following sentence with a flashing cursor line at the end of it: "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>_
8. At the flashing underline type in: ipconfig/flushdns
9. Press your enter key.
10. Your computer should say:
11. Windows 2000 IP Configuration Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.
12. Now click the "X" in the upper right box of the window. The box disappears and you are finished.
13. Make sure you follow the instructions exactly.

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Other Operations to Keep Your Computer Running at Top Speed:
Along with the ip flush, I do the following on a regular basis to keep my computer running at tip top condition:

1. Of course, it is very important to regularly run your security software like McAfee, AVG, Clamwin, SpybotS&D, Adaware, etc. Every computer has it's own mix of software. Most people have those programs running automatically. I choose to run mine when it is convenient for me. I usually do this every weekend or every other week.
   
2. Running your disk defragmenter and disk cleanup keeps the whole computer running faster. I try to do all of this once every one or two weeks depending on how much I am on the internet. If my ten year old laptop and old operating system runs well, your new system should be really fast with just a little cleaning.
3. Make sure your windows operating system is updated on a regular basis. When I realized that I needed to check this, I found that I had 77 updates. That's a lot of updates!
4. This little tip really helped with my wireless connection: because my laptop does not have a built in wireless card, I found that I had to update the driver of the wireless card that I have to manually insert in my computer to keep up with the wireless systems.

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There are detailed instructions on the other operations to keep your computer running at top speed. If anyone is interested, I would be glad to write more on these items. Also, if anyone has anything to add to this discussion, all comments are welcome.

I hope these little tips ad to your internet surfing experience.