Internet Sluggish after reformat

[shoenberg3]

All I did was reinstall XP while nothing else changed. Perhaps it's the drivers or something, but the internet is slower than before. Normal surfing seems pretty unchanged but the download speeds are noticeably slower. Even during (legal ) torrenting, while before the download did not affect my normal surfing, now it slows down the internet so much, I am forced to pause it while surfing the web. AND the download speeds are slower too.

This may be unrelated but the firefox browser (IE works) displays this:

The proxy server is refusing connections
Firefox is configured to use a proxy server that is refusing connections.
* Check the proxy settings to make sure that they are correct.

* Contact your network administrator to make sure the proxy server is
working

I don't use any external firewalls and actually not even the one that came with SP2.(that I know of)

Thanks for the help

 

[baronvongogo]

are you using a router? and if your torrenting it will always cripple your internet unless you use a torrent program in which you can specify how much bandwidth it uses.