Tech help? (Plusnet , Router or PC) Whats it most likely to be?

[#1]

Hi all,  I am finding myself increasingly frustruated with my home PC just now. Whenever i open on IE7 it can take up to 5-10 mins to get google. If i refresh the page randomly it sometime pops up straight away. Occasionally it works instantly but mostly not!!!
NOW, i have a netbook that connects wirelessly and its flawless. (Apart from the wireless adapter in the Acer Aspire One failing all the time but thats another story, when i click IE7 it opens no problem).
So, i guess my question is ...
1. Will it be my router/cables?
2. Will it be my PC/Network Card?
Dont think i can pin this on Plusnet as my Netbook works fine.
FYI - I downgraded this particular PC from Vista to XP and the drivers for the Network card are not the correct ones. Although it has worked fine for 6 months with the drivers i have!
Any ideas???

[#2]

Have you checked the Temporary Files settings?
I've seen stupidly large numbers in there causing all sorts of problems.
The recommended minimum is usually 50MB but I use 20MB without any issues.

[#3]

I am very weird when it comes to those things, my PC is always clean as a whistle, virus checked and temp file free!

[#4]

Have you tried explicitly setting DNS in your PC, e.g. to OpenDNS?

[#5]

Nope, dont really go routing around changing settings when things werwe working before.
I could just do a full format and xp install, but thats a pain in the [censored]
Moderator's note by Samuria - Attempt to bypass swear filter removed

[#6]

You need to work out if its IE or the pc.
Try Firefox and see if thats the same if it is then its the pc.
Try pinging a few sites ie ping www.plus.net ; ping www.u-net.com what is the speed
Do a tracert to hp.com how fast was that?
Post the results of ipconfig /all
If its not the right network drivers that is most likely to be the problem

[#7]

I get a similar problem, when first opening IE7 after powering up it can hang, and my solution is to kill the process using task manager. Subsequent to this IE7 works fine with no significant delay (except what I would expect with my low spec PC and slow connection!).
I don't get the same response with Firefox. I suspect a bug in IE7 but I haven't had the time to track down a patch on the MS Knowledge Base.
The network driver issue may be a red herring as I have always run XP Home on this PC and haven't downgraded (!) from Vista.
If you get any success with this please post what you did, it might be a cure for my problem.

[#8]

I don't know if it's relevant, but I saw a PC yesterday where an update to MSN Messenger had an indirect effect on both IE7 and Outlook Express, slowing down (to a crawl) the loading of both.
A system restore prior to the MM update sorted it out.
Have you tried running OX to see what happens - it shares a lot of its underpinnings with IE, so it might give some clues.

[#9]

Could your experience be related to these two reported problems?
Connection Problems IE6
Little trouble with browser connections

[#10]

Used my Norton Ghost backup and it worked fine no probs at all. Must have been a software issue i had picked up along the way.
However, whilst my pc was back at the 'factory state'.  I thought ' Why not give this Windows 7 a try since my PC has nothing on it anyway!'. So i did.
And i like it, its simple, clutter free and very easy to use!
No doubt they will fill the release version(s) with loads of utter pap to for no-one to use!!