A router can improve speed with respect to a USB modem (partly because a lot of the processing for a USB modem is done on the host computer and partly because USB1.1 has a bandwidth limit), but it doesn't have to be wireless. In fact a wireless connection may well get in the way of throughput. However there is little difference in price now and so it may well be worth getting a wireless router even if you don't plan to use the wireless capability for a while.

Kayak

Many thanks

http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/22/microsoft-is-taking-wga-to-the-next-level/

On Tuesday ms took xp validation to the next level using auto updates!!

Hi some time ago my pc was infected with a bit of malware that hijacked my homepage on IExplorer. This meant that every time I opened IExp it went to a supposed spyware site and flashed up messages saying my pc was infected. After this my home page returned to normal (I always set it to "Use Blank") until I opened another IExp window when it happened again (and on every new IEexp session). I managed to get rid of this, but forget how. Now my neighbours daughter has caught it. I seem to remember it wrote a Reg key with something like HomePageFirst in it.(or FirstHome Page. But having trawled her Registry and deleted the only key of that ilk. Also having killed all the unknown procs running and deleted their exe files. It is still there I ovbiously missed something which re writes the reg key on each re-boot. Does this ring any bells and if so can youi please advise. She is Running IE6 on XP home. Regret she is now back at uni but texted me with this problem.

Try this. It is one of the best anti malware utilities that I have found.At the end of 14 days you can uninstall it and install it again. It gives real-time coverage as well after you have done a scan. I had a couple of very bad viruses and it fixed them both when other software couldn't.


http://www.ewido.net/en/download/

rpaco:

I've reproduced this from my post on Supermum's "Stuck with 4 embedded virus!" thread.

I would suggest running Spybot and AdAware at a minimum, also installing Spywareblaster afterwards to prevent these browser hijacks from getting back in. Spywareblaster will also allow you to snapshpot your system so you can restore browser settings after a hijack. It protects both IE and Firefox. You can also snapshot the "hosts" file, another favorite target of browser hijackers

It's best to run these programs one at a time, as they can interact.

For Spybot, download from http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html

For AdAware SE (the free personal edition), download from http://www.lavasoft.de/

For Spywareblaster, download from http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/

As with all these things run frequently and keep them up to date by downloading the updates weekly or as often as recommended.

[On edit] There is one other program which is very useful tool but dangerous in the hands of the non-expert user (like, er, a surgeon's scalpel). It's called HijackThis and allows you to examine registry entries and other key system information. I found it useful to clean up rogue registry entries that were being a pain trying to load deleted DLLs from otherwise exterminated spyware.

Instruction on use and download from http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/

Sorry to keep The Publisher in suspense and belated many thanks to Spaceman, Kayak, Haystack and Mega for trying to help but I didn't crack it and things went from bad to worse. Eventually Outlook and IE packed up so I couldn't post or seek more help from you all. Man with van came round and tried unsuccessfully to re-install and I ended up 50 down with an upgrade to ME!!!!

At this point I decided to leap into the 21st century and invested in new machinery so that now I'm like a kid at Christmas playing with my new toys of XP Pro and broadband. Exciting!

Again, many thanks to all concerned. TOK

I keep getting "A run time error has occured - do you wish to debug"
Line: 0
Error : syntax error

how do I cure this please?

Click on Tools, then on Internet Options.

Click on the Advanced tab.

Look for the "Disable script debugging" line and put a check mark in the box.

Now look for the "Display a notification about every script error" line and remove the check mark in the box.

Thanks brianboru - I had that checked - Disable script debugging (internet explorer) but the error was occuring on my AOL window - just noticed "Disable script debugging (other)" so problem now solved!

TOK,

The silver lining under the cloud.

I tried to save a modicum of tech time by installing a new power unit in my photographic studio Win 2000 PC.

I screwed up the whole system - but it gave me a totally valid excuse to replace it with the state-of-the-art Win XP Pro mega fastest jobbie.

I'm over the moon and the old machine has been brought back into the office for pirating of bits.

Have fun.

TP

I've been 'converted' to BT's 8 meg offering. Had their wireless router (connected by ethernet lead - I now have 1 extra lead than before with the wireless router mains lead - lol).
Getting download speeds of between 2.5 & 3.4 meg - Wow. What a damp squid!
I've checked speeds at off-peak times (what a sad git), done all that was asked for maintenance of my PC and can see the roof of my local exchang from here. I feel conned! Now unfortunately signed up for further 12 months with the contract.
I doubt I'd get any extra speed with any BT competitors, they probably all use same equipment anyway.

Bolshi, post up your connection speed, attenuation and SNR from the stats page of the router.

Kayak. Thx for time.
BT desktop Help manager gives me download speed of 3.018
Not sure about the other info. From the router manager stats, are these what you mean?

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 8128 Kbps 448 Kbps
Noise Margin 8.5 dB 22.0 dB
Line Attenuation 39.0 dB 20.0 dB
Output Power 19.8 dBm 11.8 dBm

Edit: Can't get them into neat boxes - sorry

Bolshi

I found the following tweak sites:-

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/tweak2.htm

http://www.aopr43.dsl.pipex.com/ppages/tweaks.shtml

I've not had a need to look at anything like this yet myself, because my own 1.1Mbps BT Broadband speed is mostly OK, but it looks like the stuff on these pages can be used by anyone to tweak and get an improvement.

And I also found a Tweaktester.

"Your PC may not be setup properly to take full advantage of broadband speeds. Modifying your configuration to maximise performance is known as tweaking. For many users, tweaking is a misnomer as it implies subtle improvements. Fixing huge problems is more accurate!"

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

Tweaking might fix
Slow download speeds
Download slower than upload speed
Skipping in TCP streaming video/audio
Blank web pages
Connection issues to some sites

That's it Bolshi.

You're connecting at the highest possible speed with Max DSL, 8Mb/s downstream and 448Kb/s up. Your maximum throughput in terms of data should be around 7Mb/s (there is overhead to take off the 8Mb) but you're getting less than half that on BT's speed test. You can try the speed test at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp which is sometimes more accurate. If you still get a low result then the speed test at http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/btwspeedtest.htm will help you see whether the problem is at BT wholesale (BTw, who provide the equipment in the exchanges) or with BT retail (who provide you with your service). If the former then the problem is due to lack of capacity at the exchange and you are not likely to get benefit from changing ISP. If the latter then changing ISP will be of benefit.

As for the remaining numbers you posted up, the downstream attenuation of 39dB is the amount the ADSL signal has decreased over the distance from the exchange. It probably indicates a cable run of around 2-3Km which if you can see the roof of the exchange either means that the cable takes a very roundabout route or that the wiring is of poor quality. Either way you're stuck with that. It makes no difference at the moment since you're on the top speed but when ADSL2+ comes in with speeds up to 24Mb/s you will probably find you won't get too much more than you're getting at the moment.

The Noise Margin is the strength of the ADSL signal over background noise and the figure is not too bad in your case. This is very dependent on the quality of the house wiring and the main way to improve it is to separate the ADSL signal out at the master socket with a built-in filter rather than piping it around the house. However in your case there would not be a huge benefit in messing around since you are already at the highest speed.

You can try the tweaks Doc suggests. In terms of general browsing speed with IE, if you're comfortable changing the registry then the following change will give a large benefit as it means IE can request 16 files at the same time rather than the default 4, I think.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings: Set MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and MaxConnectionsPerServer to 16 decimal.

By the way, BT have said in the past that people should not expect the performance of MaxDSL to be much more than 2Mb/s at peak times, although most people are getting more than that, and certainly off-peak.

Many thanks Kayak & Doc. I'll get onto it. Not very encouraging to know that adsl2+ not going to do much for me. Hey-ho.
I wonder if I can talk BT into giving me bunched pairs?

I've tried the adslguide tester by the way and I just get the blank grey square. I've done as they suggested and deleted and re-installed Java bt I think there may be a problem with their tester itself.

I'll have a go at the registry tweek (after backing up my old registry settings). Thx again