Web pages taking forever to load?

Even with a high speed Internet connection, over time you may see your browser speed decrease to a crawl, no matter what website you try to access. While this could be caused by a number of things, your first move is to clear your browser cache.

Your browser stores both images and text on your local computer in an area called cache. If it needs to display those files again, it's quicker to get them from your local machine than from the webserver. Unfortunately, over time the cache grows, until eventually it is full of outdated information. Clearing the cache and restarting the browser could be the solution!

Boring as it may sound, periodically housecleaning is essential for the health of your browser. But do this only when your browser becomes sluggish, or you will negate the purpose of cache. And be aware that once you clear the cache, it will take a little longer to load some pages, until it "restocks" itself.

Be sure to close and reopen your browser after clearing the cache!

How to clear cache depends on what browser you are using. The following lists the steps to take for a few of the most popular browsers.

In Firefox:
Select Tools > Options.
Open the Advanced panel and click the Network tab.
Click the Clear Now button inside the Cache tab to clear the cache.
(You can adjust the size of your cache here. The default is 50 MB.)

In Netscape 4.x-7.x:
Select Edit, then click Preferences.
Select Advanced, then click Cache. (If no subcategories are visible, double-click Advanced to expand the list.)
Click on Clear Memory Cache and Clear Disk Cache buttons to clear the cache.

In Internet Explorer 5.x:
Select Tools.
Select the Internet Options.
Click on Delete Files to clear the cache.

In Internet Explorer 6.x - 7.x:
Select Tools.
Select Internet Options.
On the General Tab, under Browsing History, click Delete...
Next to Temporary Internet Files, click Delete Files to clear the cache.

In AOL:
Select My AOL.
Select Preferences, then click www.
Select Delete Files.