Cable broadband slow in normal mode but ok in safe mode.

Gentlemen, this is my first post. I have a problem with my broadband speed. I am on 10Mb cable and I noticed soon after Christmas things started to slow down online. I checked my download speed on various test sites and I was getting no better than 2Mb. I contacted my ISP (Virgin) and they sent me a new cable modem. Plugged in said modem, still slow. Got back to my ISP again and this time spoke to a very helpful guy. To cut a long story short we found I could get 9.5Mb+ whilst in Safe Mode with networking (Win XP Pro SP3) so he suggested I had a problem with my PC. Spybot, Ad Aware and Norton AV say all is well. I've tried running without Zonealarm and Norton AV, in fact I've cut out anything that may be interfering with my connection but still no good. Reinstated them with no change to the speed. Help!!

 

Maybe this can Help, http://www.ezlan.net/Internet_Speed.html

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Thanks for that cat5e. I have already tried that route, plus a few more! Anyway I have re optimised the TCP/IP stacks and re tested but still the same results. Very fast in Safe Mode, much slower in Normal mode. By the way I am running Win XP SP3 and my computer is less than 6 months old.
My ISP engineer ( by phone) pointed me toward a Virginmedia site to enable me to download a 211MB file so we could see what speeds I was getting. In Normal mode the file reported a download time of 28 minutes at 130KB/s. In Safe mode it was 1 minute at 1.2MB/s. Quite a difference! There is something loading with Windows which is affecting my connection but I haven't a clue as to what. I spent a few hours last evening going through Majorgeeks excellent malware removal tutorial for Win XP but nothing was found.

 

Halo, did the bit with msconfig, although I had done some selective pruning before posting i.e Norton AV 2005, Zonealarm Free, Adaware and Spybot S&D. Did no good. After disabling all I managed to get up to 4Mb/s down and 0.48Mb/s up in Normal mode. Tried the same setup in Safe mode and got 9.86 Mb/s down and 0.48Mb/s up. The apps mentioned above are all I run normally though I do have Superantispyware and MalwareBytes Antimalware running since last night when I loaded them to check for malware.

 

Sorry it's been a while since I last answered your suggestions. Not been well. Thanks for all your input Gents. It seems my problem has been resolved. I am getting decent connection speeds and this has been achieved without actually doing anything to my PC which would have accounted for the sudden speedup!. Another one of lifes mysteries!