Slow dial-up internet access after ntl broadband disconnected

[notrom]

I signed up to ntl's free broadband trial last year. Partly because of their appalling customer service I did not subscribe to their pay service and was disconnected by ntl when the trial ended.



While I was with ntl, whenever I opened Internet Explorer a message reading 'Detecting proxy settings...' appeared in the bottom left corner of IE for some minutes before opening my ISP home page. Even though Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m now disconnected I still get this message and now my dial-up access to the internet is extremely slow (eg last Sunday I was reading some of the papers on line and was taking 3-4 minutes to open each new newspaper article) as are downloading speeds.



I have checked with my ISP that my Internet Explorer settings are correct, and Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve defragged and done up-to-date scans with Ad-aware and Spybot. The only thing I can conclude is that the ntl installation has left something on my machine thatââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s causing a conflict and slowing things down. Unfortunately, if this is so, I canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t find anything to delete/uninstall. Canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t face having to contact ntl again, does anyone have any comments/suggestions/help? Am not very computer literate, so please keep any advice simple!!!!



PS

As for ntl, I found the actual broadband connection very good and canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t recall any problems. Itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s customer service (surely a contradiction in terms!) that was the problem. Things got off to a bad start from day one: in advance of the ntl engineerââ‚à ƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s visit I moved a bookcase standing against a wall where the engineer would lay the ntl cable. The engineer took about ½ hour to install everything and left me to plug in the modem and run the installation disk; nice chap, I thought, even replaced the bookcase for me.



When I realised I didnââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t have a code number to enter I tried to ring ntl: no dialling tone. I assumed there was a software conflict and rang BT engineer on another line: BT told me my original line may be damaged. Pulled aside the bookcase to reveal the BT line clearly severed and hanging loose; in other words, the engineer knew heââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢d cut my line but instead of admitting his mistake hid the evidence and made good his escape before I found out. Things went downhill after that. Perhaps a dozen phone calls with 30-40 minute waits listening to the most irritating music Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve ever heard (punctuated at regular intervals by an idiotic womanââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s voice trying to flog me stuff Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve less than zero interest in) while I waited to be connected to an operator. All the usual unfulfilled promises outlined regularly on this forum; I wonââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t bore you further except to say Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve never dealt with any company as incompetent as ntl. (incompetent is the charitable way to describe ntl; Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m rapidly coming to the conclusion that lying and duplicitous are the accurate and appropriate words to be used to describe ntl).

[MikeyB]

Hi notrom, and welcome to Cable Forum (ooooo never done that before!!!)

My guess would be that you have IE set to automatically configure it's settings:
Goto Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> Lan Settings
You should see an Automatic Configuration section.
If either Automatically detect settings or Use automatic configuration script are ticked, try unticking them so they are not used.

These settings are usually for use on a LAN, and as far as I know, are not set by NTL software, well wasn't on my PC.

Cheers
MikeyB

[notrom]

Thanks for welcome and advice MickeyB
Have tried your suggestion and am seeing if it makes any difference. Not sure so far, perhaps I should reboot and start again. One of the problems I have is that internet pages seem to become unresponsive when clicking on links to open new page. Am currently looking at Timesonline and only way I can access new news stories is by clicking refresh button.

Cheers, notrom

[notrom]

Hi again MickeyB

Rebooted and tried again, testing with and without your suggestion:

Opening up ISP home page: With suggestion: 2 min 10 secs. Without suggestion 3 min 15 secs.

Downloading the same page from the Guardian: With suggestion: 10 secs. Without suggestion: got to 15% completion and stuck there for 5 minutes when I cancelled and gave up.

So it looks as if you were right. Thanks very much for your help - enormously appreciated.

One thing puzzles me: I still get 'Detecting proxy settings...' message with or without. Though it was June 2004 that I began ntl trial and it's hard remembering what happened before that, I'd swear I didn't get the poxy proxy message. Any ideas or have I just forgotten about something that's standard no matter what system or company you use?

Cheers and cheers
notrom

[MikeyB]

Hi notrom,

Soz for missing this post again, oops!!!

Anyway, glad it's now better for you.
Those times you quote for opening you ISP home page, does that include the time it takes to dial up, I'm guessing you are on dial-up now as that does still seem to be quite a long time to load a page.

But the Gurdian page seems to load nice & quick for you now