Suggest searching for 'broadband speed test' and pick a local but big name site, and run it on all computers to compare speed. Are all computers wired to the router in the same manner? Have you tried a different ethernet cable for this machine? Does the cable run near any electrical devices or power lines in parallel?

Try running network setup wizard or Internet wizard and choose different options each time to see any improvement. What are the firewall/security settings, and the settings in IE's or control panel Internet settings... set all to default or medium.

Run the same speed test after playing with above and look for improvement.

Call your Internet provider and ask to be led through the setup (hope you don't get a guy in India that barely speaks English!)--you might actually try this first.

The Chrome browser was recently rated the fastest, but you can do a search and get custom settings for Firefox that speed it up too. (Try Lifehacker.com)

Increase the system memory to the maximum, BTW what is the processor and its speed? Older machines don't handle modern browsers well. Try looking at your system monitor (contol-shift-escape?) including the CPU and networking panels.

Go into system options in control panel and play with the performance settings to up speed over graphics and check the paging file settings, perhaps double them or set for system optimized.

Sorry I'm not clearer here, been off the XP for a few months and on the Mac lately, but the above are some of the system tweaks you can do. Also get rid of services you don't need, remove unused programs, etc. Lifehacker has some good system tweaking advice.
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