Even ancient rural dial-up shouldn't be this sluggish

Q: I have an HP Pavilion a600y with 1.5 gigabytes of memory running Windows XP Home at my mountain cabin. Unfortunately I only have 28 Kbps dial-up phone service available. The slow modem is annoying enough, but something has been happening lately to slow the computer to an intolerable level — especially when I'm trying to access a content-heavy site such as The Seattle Times!

Norton Internet Security is installed and up to date and informs me that I have only low-threat cookies appearing, which I promptly remove along with temporary Internet files, using Internet Options. Internet Security is set at medium-high. Task Manager doesn't reveal any suspicious applications or processes (that I can identify).

The one clue that I have is that MSN Connection Center shows a steady transfer of data at a clip of about 2K per second, even when I'm idly reading a page. I've turned off anything that looks extraneous in the Startup folder and temporarily turned off Windows Update and Norton Live Update to see whether that addresses the problem. It doesn't — the data just continues to transfer. I left the computer online overnight and found the next morning that 120 MB had transferred with only my nonchanging home page running.

What more can I do to understand this persistent background-data transfer that I suspect is the root cause of the slowness? Again, the 28K dial-up service has always been naturally but not intolerably slow. This problem has become much more pronounced in recent weeks.

Dave Reynolds, Redmond

A: I'm old enough to remember when 28Kbps seemed kind of fast. When I worked at the Oakland Tribune in the early 1980s, we sent stories via modem at 300 baud. Way slower.

Your slow performance may result from more than one thing. First, Web sites are being designed for higher-speed connections. So a site that may have performed OK at 28Kbps a couple of years ago may be dragging now because it's trying to display a lot more bandwidth-chewing data.

Next, it's always possible you have a virus not detected by your anti-virus program. That may account for slower Internet performance.

I'm not surprised, by the way, that you're showing a data transfer rate of 2K per second even when you're not downloading something. Web pages, anti-virus programs and other applications' automatic-update features are often calling out to servers. Still, 120 megabytes of data transferred overnight is pretty high — unless there was a major automatic program update that took place.

I'll assume that you're using a firewall. It's important to know that anti-virus programs protect only against viruses, not against hackers accessing your computer over the Internet. If you're not using a firewall, you should install one.

You've already done most of the things I would recommend. Users with similar problems should be running up-to-date anti-virus software and should check Task Manager to see if any suspicious processes are running, though it can be difficult to tell what processes are suspicious, especially for inexperienced computer users.

The most likely cause of the problem, however, is an application that you may not be aware is using the Internet.

You've already determined that it isn't your anti-virus program or Windows Update. But many other applications may be automatically accessing the Internet.

There are two ways to determine this. First, you can use a network sniffer program to see what traffic is actually moving between your computer and the Internet.

Some basic sniffer programs are available free on the Internet — and they show more information than Windows Task Manager — but they also require a good deal of expertise to use.

Second, you can use the trial-and-error method. That would require you to disable all applications loaded in the Startup folder and add them in one by one, noting the effect on your Internet performance as you go.

Finally — and this is the single most common cause of degraded dial-up Internet connection performance — it may be a problem with your phone line.

If you're not comfortable with exploring these options, it may be time to hire a consultant to take a look.

Questions for Patrick Marshall may be sent by e-mail to pmarshall@seattletimes.com or pgmarshall@pgmarshall.net, or by mail at Q&A/Technology, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.