How to Speed Up Internet Explorer

by David Hakala

Internet Explorer is full of features, but those features can slow down your Web surfing. If speed is more important to you than amenities, here are five IE tweaks that will make you happy.

1. Increase the number of simultaneous connections. If you have a multi-megabit/second broadband connection, a lot of its bandwidth is wasted by downloading a maximum of two Web page components simultaneously; that is IE 7’s default value for “maximum number of connections.” Most Web sites don’t serve files faster than 50 to 100 Kbps per connection. You can get faster page loading by increasing the maximum number of connections to 10 or more; that’s 500 to 1,000 Kbps total throughput. To increase the maximum number of simultaneous connections,

Click Start, then Run, and enter regedit.
Navigate to the following registry entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Click on both of these settings and change their values to 10:

MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
MaxConnectionsPerServer

2. Turn off the phishing filter. This feature sends URLs embedded in pages you are viewing to Microsoft for inspection. If Microsoft determines there is a risk of a phishing exploit behind a URL (never mind how), it sends you a warning pop-up. You have to wait while that round-trip is made, slowing down your browsing. It is faster to rely on a desktop anti-malware app such as Avast! Antivirus. To disable IE 7’s phishing filter,

In IE, click Tools, then Phishing Filter, then “Turn On Automatic Website Checking.”
Click the “turn off” radio button on the pop-up window.

3. Turn off scheduled RSS feed checking. You don’t use IE for RSS feeds, do you? Why waste the time it takes to check for new feeds every so often? If you use IE for RSS feeds, you don’t need to take a browsing performance hit while a scheduled download goes on. Do it manually on your own schedule. To turn off scheduled RSS feeds,

Click Tools, then Internet Options, then Content, then Feeds, then Settings.
Uncheck everything on the Settings screen.

4. ClearType makes text a little more readable. It is enabled by default in Internet Explorer even if it is turned off elsewhere in Windows. You can try disabling this resource-eater to see if normal type is good enough for you. To disable ClearType,

Cick Tools, then Advanced.
Scroll down and uncheck the box labeled, “Always use ClearType for HTML.”

5. Disable the SSVHelper Class plugin. This mysterious thing seems to be a non-essential part of the Java Plugin. Its absence has not been reported to make any difference in the running of Java applets. To disable the SSVHelper Class plugin,

Click Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons.
Select the SSVHelper Class line, click Disable, and then OK.

David Hakala has perpetrated technology tutorials since 1988 in addition to committing tech journalism, documentation, Web sites, marketing collateral, and profitable prose in general. His complete rap sheet can be seen at http://www.linkedin.com/in/dhakala