Internet Connection Response Problem

I forgot to mention that about my modem. It's ethernet. As for the resources I know that's pretty low, but everything in my msconfig is what I put there. It's been there for a long time. The computer has only started not responding about a month ago out of the blue. I haven't installed anything for a long time and I only visit the same websites that I did back when I was on dialup. My dialup didn't ever have a problem like this. I don't know anything about IP configurations.

Yeah I know I need to get more RAM, but this problem just started about a month ago. I've had Cable for a lot longer than that.

Also I need to patch up another mistake I had with my system resources. I had checked my resources while I had all my windows open trying to find an answer. When I do a fresh reboot I have 82% free.

I will also try to explain what happens with programs a little bit better as well so that maybe it will make it easier to get an answer.

I click on Internet Explorer. The hard drive does it's blinking and loads the program normally, but before it shows up it tries to make an internet connection. That's when it stops responding. Once it responds again the page loads nice and fast. When I click a link, it stops responding for a little bit before actually going to the next page.

I have a couple video games that I play online with as well and the game will run perfectly fine until I click the internet button. It will stop responding for over a minute. Then once it establishes a connection it's smooth sailing from there.

does the cable modem plug into the USB outlet or is it the telephone cable looking RJ45 multiconductor cable that is wider than standard 6 wire phone cable?
The point being that USB sometimes does not do as well as NIC.
The point also being to suspect the cable modem. I have known several to blow down or start messing up, and being replaced by others that don't work.
IP configuration is about the modem trying to connect to an IP address through the modem, and maybe doing a security check or some other slowdown in the modem configuration, that has changed for some reason.

I installed an ethernet card in one of my slots and the modem is connected to that. It's not USB. If NIC means anything like network interface card or something like that, it's that.

Sorry I don't know much about the abbreviations, but I'm learning.

Windows will always use a percentage of availible RAM. More RAM means more to use. More RAM does not mean that 60% will improve to 80% or more.

Download and run Process Explorer to see what is running in your system:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

It seems, something is running in the background and calling home.

Use Process Explorer and try locating anything weird.

Stop the process and test your internet connection.

Zee

Process Explorer was what I used to begin with to find out all the crap that I didn't even know was running before. I appreciate your suggestion because I would have suggested that to anybody first hand if I hadn't already used it myself. I wish that would have been the answer, though, because PE is a really good tool to have in my opinion.

Unfortunately nothing else is running except kernel, internet explorer and Process Explorer when i check it.

Test your internet connection at:

http://www.dslreports.com/tools

You should probably start with the Tweak Test.

Zee

I'll check out Firefox and see what's up with that. Does it have full Java support and Shockwave? Stuff like that?

Also when I do those computer checks on sites that tell you what your IP is and things like that, it tells me that the IE that I'm using is Mozilla. Is that true?

Micke