First, remove ANY added tool bars. Each tool bar takes some time to load and initiate.
Cleanup your drive. If your drive is getting to full, it can negatively impact your performances.
Temporarily disable the accelerators, plugins and modules. Maybe there is something that is not working properly with one of those. Reactivate them one at the time untill you find one that causes some problem. Delete that one, and, optionaly reinstall it if it's one that you regularly use or need.
Open McAfee and disable, at least temporarily, any so caled "real time protection". It can REALY kill your performances.
Make sure that any real time scanning level is set to the lowest level. You don't want to rescan an unchanged file that have been scaned during the last few weeks...
Exclude some folders, like the internet cache.
Also exclude the following extentions: *.htm *.html *.shtm *.shtml ALL image formats(JPG GIF PNG BMP...)
Open Internet properties and reduce the internet cache size. You probably don't need more than 50Mb. Most of the time, 20 to 30Mb is more than enough. If it's to large it can worsen your access as you get more and more cached items to check. It also cause your drive to fill up to much, slowing files access.
Defragmenting your drives can't hurt and may improve things somewhat.
Finaly, unless you absolutely want or need to use internet explorer, take a look at other browsers, like Firefox, Chrome or Opera. All 3 are prety fast, often faster than internet explorer.
All 3 will offer you to import your favorites, saved passwords and settings from Internet explorer on install or first run.
I REALY DON'T recomend Apple's Safari. I saw to many reports about problems it have caused.
Electro
May 2011
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