I am having intermittent problems with my internet slowing down/stopping. I think it has been slowly working up to this but now it starts loading a page and just hangs. Usually it never completes, sometimes after a while it suddenly pops the page up. Sometimes it doesn't seem to see links at all when you click on them. Sometimes rebooting the computer fixes it, sometimes it doesn't.

The thing is, it doesn't always happen. I used it for 2 hours yesterday morning and it was fine; took it to work and it was fine; got it back home and I could barely get the internet up at all. Finally gave up trying. Today it was fine for about an hour; got real slow and stopped; I rebooted the computer and now it seems OK again. My roomate uses the same wireless connection at home and has had no problems.

I'm using Windows XP professional and IE6; and it happens whether I'm using a wireless card or am plugged directly into the network. I have scanned with Norton and found nothing; got rid of all the add-ons at startup; defragmented the hard drive, and emptied the cookies and temporary internet files. I had Spy Sweeper but it never seemed to work right and I uninstalled it, so at the moment I don't have a spyware program. I'm not seeing any signs that there's anything like that going on, anywhere I know to look, anyway.

Since it is so intermittent it seems unlikly it's a setting problem; could be malware of some kind, I suppose. At the moment I'm leaning toward an approaching hardware meltdown. (This computer has done that before, although never with the internet as it's main symptom.)

Any suggestions? Is there a program I could run where I could see what it's actually doing at the point where it hangs up?

WW