Member Avatar for flyerorange

On one of my desktops, which runs Win ME, Ebay has slowed to a crawl. No other sites are giving me problems. Any suggestions or opinions? Thanks a lot.

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Old machines running Windows ME often behave oddly on modern sites. and made good basic suggestions about connection and malware; beyond those, there are a few Win‑ME‑specific causes that commonly make one site (like eBay) feel painfully slow while others seem fine.

  • TLS/HTTPS compatibility: very old browsers lack modern TLS versions, cipher suites and sometimes SNI support. That can stall the secure handshake or force slow fallbacks. A quick comparison is to load eBay from a current phone or laptop on the same network — if that is fast, the ME box is the problem. Long term, use a modern client for commerce sites.
  • System clock / certificate checks: an incorrect BIOS/system time causes SSL validation failures and repeated retries. Confirm the desktop date/time and replace the CMOS battery if it resets on reboot.
  • DNS / hosts file issues: stale or overridden entries (C:\Windows\hosts) or a DNS resolver that times out for CDN domains will produce long page loads limited to heavy sites. Try a different DNS (router-level or another device) to compare.
  • Heavy JavaScript and rendering: eBay pages are resource‑heavy. Old JS engines and slow CPUs can make the page hang during scripting even when the network is fine. A stripped-down/mobile view from another device will help confirm this.

Practical next steps: first test eBay from another device on the same network; if it’s fine there, check the ME PC’s clock and hosts file, reboot the router, and try a different DNS. If problems persist, avoid doing transactions from that machine — either use a modern PC/phone or boot a current live Linux/USB to browse; Windows ME is unsupported and risky for e‑commerce.

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Member Avatar for thepastimer

What kind of connection do you have? Your browser cache might be full of info from some other web page and so you have no stored data from ebay. Also, what browser are you using?

Member Avatar for clientdixon

It's a great help too if you have your anti-virus and anti-malware software as these helps clean up your pc from unwanted and malicious data. Malwares and viruses are the main culprit of destroying your programs as well as your windows.

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