What can I do to speed the downloading of files?

General Questions
#1

I download lots of web-based articles on financial trends. Usually, this goes smoothly, but every few articles I try saving to my desktop finds the download getting so slooooooow that it essentially stops–and this with a broadband connection. When I click the “cancel” button and try to stop the download, my PC goes into HAL 9000 mode and won’t respond to commands.

FWIW, these aren’t graphic-heavy files. At most, they have incidental ads on the page, so the download can’t be that huge, can it? I typically save these files by clicking File > Save As > Web page, complete.

One of the non-pages I am trying to download right now, BTW, was mentioned by another poster: www.dansdata.com/altindex.html. MY PC has been stuck at 85 % saved for about 10 minutes. Can’t disconnect and not sure WHAT to disconnect in Windows Task Manager.

Questions:

  1. What PC upgrades do I need to speed this downloading process?
  2. What causes these bottlenecks? Is it a video card problem? Server problem?
  3. Why won’t my PC terminate downloading when I manually try to disconnect?
#2

Uh huh. From www.financialtrendsluts.com? “Wow, she’s got great assets.”

Sounds like you might have some malware. And it could be that your swap file is too small. Or you might be running out of hard drive space.

Or not.

#3

Maybe try using a different browser to see if it’s browser related. Switch to Firefox if your running IE and try to save the page. You may want to make sure that your temp files aren’t getting so full they are affecting performance. Usually you can find a command to delete temp files somewhere in the internet options settings of your browser.

#4

I hate to wander into GQ since I don’t know diddly about the subject, but here is a link I found while researching the exact same question for myself yesterday.

http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/

Haven’t tried any of it yet. Plus it sounds like you have a bigger problems, and this is just a tweak to get the maximum possible speed, but someone may find it useful…

#5

The fact that your computer seizes up when you try to cancel a slow download suggests that it’s browser related. I second Flander’s advice about trying a different browser.

This is a bit confusing. If you’re saving a page you’re reading, the page is already downloaded. It has to be; you’re already reading it. So it’s definitely not a connetion thing.

Some more information on OS and browser would be helpful. If you have any third party widgets installed, they might be the culprits.

#6

When you save the complete web page (for later offline viewing), you are saving every little peice of data, every flash object, all text, and a lot of stuff you don’t need that gets saved into another folder accompanying the .html page. If it’s just the text you want to read, perhaps just copy/paste the stuff into notepad or something. Might be a temp solution if you need a quick fix.

#7

I save web pages daily. With IE 6 (Win98), it’s obvious that the page is being downloaded again, so it could be a connection problem. Of course, that could be some unknown configuration problem on my system. With Firefox, the save is instant. Go Firefox!

#8

I’m operating on Win XP on a brand-new notebook PC. Lots of speed, storage, RAM on this notebook and, yes, I’ve checked for malware. My browser is IE 6.

Same thing happens with my desktop, same basic config.

YES, you’re right. Downloading is no problem. Saving the files is slower than molasses in winter.

FLANDER suggests cutting and pasting to notepad. I guess my question is why does it take so long for my PC to save these pages? Will a faster video card, more RAM, whatever speed this up?
Sorry TDN, this is legit financial stuff, not porn.

#9

Is there some way to configure IE so that when I click “save,” it will allow me to save to notepad–or in something that strips all the photos, flash trash, etc. from the article?

#10

Maybe I’m missing something here.

When I clicked on your link Carnac the page loaded up for me right away. But when I tried to save it (using Firefox) I sat there for a long time watching nothing happen. Does this happen with every page or is this just the worst example?

Could it be that the page you are trying to save is made up of nothing but hundreds of links? I think your browser is trying to download every single website that is linked on the page and consolidate it into one giant file.

Instead of trying to save everything, just bookmark the page and then visit the links you want and save whatever is published on them when you have the time.

#11

Had to add something that might help -

On that same page that caused Firefox to chug down to nothing - the problem is how you are trying to save the page.

You are probably trying to save the page as “Complete”.

Try this instead:

Go to the page you want to save.

Click “File…Save As…”

When the box pops up, look near the bottom center…you should see a line that says “Save as type…” with an option box next to it. It probably says “Web Page Complete” in there now. You want to change that to “Web Page HTML Only” to preserve the links but still have a small download. This will create an HTML file that you can use anytime that maintains the links but doesn’t try to download them all.

If you try to save it as a text-file only I think you will lose the linkability.

Hope this helps!

#12

Damn lack o’ preview:

Carnac those previous instructions were for Internet Explorer.