slow surfing

Having been found "clean" in your Malware Forum, I come here to see if you can help me correct anything on this (Vista) laptop that may be causing slowness and sometimes "no-ness" in surfing. Using Netgear Wirelss Router for Broadband and have no trouble with other (XP) laptop.

 

First, update any antivirus applications and do a scan... Then reset all ie settings. That should help any minor problems

 

Hello, I updated Avast and ran a thorough scan of harddrives. It showed 8 files that it said it couldn't scan due to password protection -- six were .vbs files. Does this mean anything? As to resetting IE, should I reset to Dafault and then customize according to directions given in your Malware forum? Thanks.