Ok...

Lately my browsers and e-mail have been sluggish as *censored*.  I have cable connection with Zone Alarm firewall.

Ran anti-virus (AVG and eTrust), Ad-Aware and SpyDoctor as well as a registry check.

When I start up GAIM it runs fine, but the browser and e-mail takes forever to render a page/e-mail and when it does finally do it, it goes in "spurts".

I already uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox and Thunderbird as well.

I am stumped...

any advice?About 2 months ago, my son's computer got to the point it would not display a web page in IE.  If he opened IE, it simply displayed a blank page.  We determined the OS partition on his partitioned hard drive was getting quite full.  He moved My DOCUMENTS from C:\ to D:\, freeing up some space on C:\ and then his web browsing returned to normal.  
 
How much free space (absolute and percentage-wise) on your OS drive/partition?

Also, how long since you deleted temporary internet files?  Might help do do that; deleting cookies and clearing history might also help.That isn't the problem, but thank you.What isn't?  The free space, or cleanup of temporary internet files, etc.?I have plenty of free space and I delete my temp files all the timeGAIM is instant messaging, right?  And, if you're just sending text back and forth, that takes very little bandwidth.  I suggest you visit http://www.dslreports.com/tools and run a speed test.  This should give you some solid EVIDENCE of whether you have any hardware issues affecting your internet speed, such as a failing modem.  The modem is fine because I have a wireless card on a laptop connected via router thru my DESKTOP and that is fine.

This problem is really bugging me because I can't figure it out at all.OK, then why not run a speed test with both computers and compare the results.  And, then run the Tweaks test; that one identifies possible Windows settings that may be causing a slowdown in connection speed and recommends changes.Trying to but the page isn't loading for some REASON....  as soon as it does I will do the tests.