Removed malware but now Internet is slow!

I wonder if anyone can please advise me?

Basically I have removed malware and now my Internet is really slow. But I will start at the beginning and try to include as much detail as possible because I’m not sure exactly what has caused this problem…

I recently found my PC was getting unresponsive for no reason and half my anti-malware programs had stopped working (AVG, Spybot, etc.), and I couldn’t install new ones, so I decided to give my machine a serious overhaul and set about carefully following the guides in this forum.

First I cleaned up with CCleaner & installed SmartDefrag. Then I ran Combofix. Then I installed Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware.

Then I installed all new antivirus & firewall. First, going on the recommendation here, I tried Comodo. But I found it seriously confusing to use. I was baffled by all the options; it never asked me anything; I couldn’t see what it was blocking or allowing. Frankly it seemed absolutely terrible compared to Sygate & AVG (which I’ve used for years).

After about a day I decided I hated it and instead Avira antivirus and Outpost firewall instead. They do seem better than Comodo, although I still don’t find them easy to use at all and I’m still seriously missing Sygate and AVG. Maybe it’s just what you’re used to? And maybe these programs are actually doing a better job behind the scenes? (I mention this because, as an aside, I would be very interested to hear people’s opinions on this: are Avira and Outpost better than AVG and Sygate? And am I the only person who finds them deeply confusing to use?)

Anyway, the overhaul of my PC was successful. Apparently I did have some malware (can’t remember what, but a few things were found — and not just tracking cookies, I mean real threats). So now I feel things are generally working a lot better and my PC is more responsive.

However, ever since I made these changes, my Internet speed has now gone ridiculously slow, and I’m just not sure what to do. I have a 20Mbps connection with my ISP. I have done multiple online speed tests with FireFox and IE and they all show download speeds of around 500Kbps (the lowest one said 117Kbps). Now maybe these online tests aren’t very accurate, but anything under 1 meg is way lower than normal, and I know myself that everything is slow because… well, because it is slow! And it’s not just say a FireFox issue — my newsreader is really slow too, so clearly this is not about any particular application.

I also don’t think it’s a problem with my ISP because they can’t see any problems with my connection.

I have also tried everything with my new firewall (Outpost) turned completely off, just in case that was slowing it down, but that seems to make no difference.

I really don’t know what to do now. Can anyone please help?

 

Problem solved now, thanks!

The problem was caused by Outpost. I had tried turning it off to eliminate it, with no effect. But now I tried completely uninstalling it, and my Internet speed returned instantly to normal.