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When your internet is running slow it can be beyond frustrating. Grappling with downloading or uploading files when your internet is chugging along can be tedious. Figuring out why your connection has gone slow is a must-do if you’re to overcome the problem. But where to start? Here are five common reasons your internet could be running slow that you can use as a guide. 1. Network congestion Network congestion is like a traffic jam on your data highway. It occurs when there is more data trying to travel across a network than the available bandwidth can handle. The overload leads to annoying performance issues, such as increased latency. A common cause can be when too many devices are connected to your network at the one time. There’s not much you can do about it except maximize your internet plan with your service provider or find a service provider whose network doesn’t suffer as bad congestion. You might also decide to use your internet at times other than peak times. 2. Background applications consuming bandwidth If you’re running programs or downloading large files in the background while surfing the web, you might be consuming your available bandwidth as those programs or downloads clock up megabytes. You might not even be aware of the apps and programs running and the effects they’re having on your internet speed. To prevent that happening you should regularly check to see what background processes are running and close unused apps and programs to free up bandwidth for other important tasks. 3. IP throttling Some internet service providers deliberately slow down internet connections. This can be done for a variety of reasons. For example, for users that have reached certain data limits, to ease congestion or to prioritize other traffic. Throttling can affect your overall internet experience making activities like streaming, downloading, browsing, or gaming slower than usual. In some cases, a VPN can help prevent IP throttling by changing your IP address, or the home address that your internet service provider sees as belonging to your connection. PCWorld reviews VPNs, so be sure to check out our list of the best VPNs. Pexels: Jakob Zerdzicki 4. Malicious software or viruses Viruses and other malware can affect your internet speed in a number of ways. They can run in the background of your PC, consuming your computer’s CPU and memory resources. Alternatively, they can chew up bandwidth by downloading or uploading files without your knowledge. In some cases, viruses can even infect your router causing it to malfunction or slow down. Viruses can also conduct malicious activities like Distributed Denial of Service (DDos attacks) which can further degrade your internet performance. Make sure you are using a reliable antivirus program, such as one of those that PCWorld recommeneds. 5. Outdated or broken router When all is said and done, if your internet is slow and there is no apparent reason, you could have a router suffering from technical difficulties. Alternatively, your router might just be old and not support the latest technological standards, or the firmware could be out of date. If you can’t just update the firmware, you’re going to need a new router to facilitate faster speeds and get you back surfing the web in double time. Related content 7 warning signs your computer was hacked — and what to do Solve your Wi-Fi problems with these smart router settings How to speed up your laptop without spending a dime Read...

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Today PCWorld has launched a major update to Smart Answers. When you ask the tool a question, you will now get a longer, more-detailed and better-structured answer that really helps you get the most from our in-depth journalism. What is Smart Answers Smart Answers is a chatbot tool that helps you get more from our content. It’s built using Generative AI and content written by our human editors. The way we interact with content is changing. It wasn’t so long ago you would have sifted through a printed magazine for advice on the latest consumer technology, yet it felt like a revolution when magazines switched to digital and online editions. These days, everything you could ever want to read is on the internet—or just as likely on YouTube or TikTok. The difficulty comes in finding trustworthy, up-to-date information that precisely and immediately answers your question, and most of us tend to rely on search engines and algorithms to figure that out, with varying degrees of success. But faced with a page full of links to visually similar content, you’re still at least one step away from the information you need. Smart Answers is our new reader service that turns content discovery on its head. You control the questions, the answers, and the delivery. It’s like having a PCWorld editor at your beck and call, allowing you to request and receive specific content on demand. So, why wait for the content to find you? PCWorld’s Smart Answers tool is now available in key regions across the globe. Try Smart Answers We’ve worked in partnership with Miso.ai to develop Smart Answers, a GenAI tool (see What is GenAI?) that draws only on Foundry‘s complete catalog of English-language content (written by humans) to answer your natural-language questions. You’ll not only benefit from the expert knowledge of PCWorld editors, but those of Macworld, Tech Advisor and TechHive too, collectively covering the entire consumer technology sphere. Smart Answers is fast and efficient, which means you don’t have to scroll through pages of information to find what you need. You can ask it anything, from what is the best laptop for gaming to which printer should you buy for your home office, or even when is the next CPU family coming out. It’s like having a PCWorld editor at your beck and call… why wait for the content to find you? Ask it a follow-up question, too, or browse the recommended reading for more detail on the topic. Smart Answers is clever enough to work out what you may want to ask next, and it will even show you best pricing for related products and services. Smart Answers has been trained on the type of tech-related questions our readers are likely to ask. Ask it a silly or irrelevant question, and you’ll either get a silly or irrelevant answer, or no answer at all. Our priority is to ensure Smart Answers is able to adequately respond to questions on the topics we do cover. Though Smart Answers is intrinsically linked to our editorial content, our editorial function stands independently. No article published on this site has been created using GenAI. Extensive testing has been conducted by our editors over the two years since we first launched Smart Answers in August 2025, with our feedback used to retrain the model. We wouldn’t be rolling this upgrade out today if we were not confident that the answers it provides are as trustworthy as if they had come direct from our editorial team. This cycle of testing, feedback, and retraining is ongoing and will be important as we continue to add functionality to Smart Answers – and this is just the start of a process that will ultimately put you in charge of your own content experience across Foundry-owned sites. Of course, the real testing comes from you. We’ll be analyzing all search data collected by Smart Answers, and cross-checking the quality of responses, but we’d also love to hear your feedback. You can get in touch with our Director of Content Operations Marie Black or Director of Product and Data Neil Bennett over email. FAQ 1. How does Smart Answers work? Smart Answers is based on a GenAI platform, built by our partner Miso.ai. Unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard and other GenAI tools that source their information from all over the web, Smart Answers has been trained only on content written by Foundry journalists. It responds to queries posed in natural language with a summarized answer and links to related information. 2. What is GenAI? Short for Generative AI, GenAI is a type of artificial intelligence that is able to mimic the neural networks of the human brain and, through machine learning of existing content, generate entirely new content in the form of text, images, video and audio. When given a prompt, such as a piece of natural-language text, the computational power of GenAI allows it to deliver an answer much faster than can the human brain. 3. Can I trust Smart Answers? Yes. Smart Answers provides answers based on articles written by Foundry journalists and does not use data from any external sources, which could be unreliable or subject to copyright concerns. Extensive testing has gone on behind the scenes to help train the model, so we are satisfied that it is able to provide reliable information. We’ve also worked hard with partner Miso.ai to eliminate “hallucinations,” which are misleading or wholly incorrect answers that may be given when the answer is not known or the data required to answer the question is incomplete. If Smart Answers is unable to answer your question, it will tell you so. 4. Is Smart Answers a threat to our editorial team? Absolutely not. Smart Answers cannot exist without the expert content written by Foundry journalists. Its ability to stay useful and relevant is entirely dependent on it being able to learn from their content, and thus it is not the first step in some evil plan to replace our team of editors and cut costs. Smart Answers is a supplementary service for our readers, designed to aid content discovery and enhance the user experience. Though we will make revenue from any ads displayed on the page and earn commission on links to purchase some products and services, Smart Answers also costs us money to develop and run. 5. Is Smart Answers being used to create editorial content on PCWorld? No. Editorial articles feed into Smart Answers, but Smart Answers is not used for the creation of editorial articles. But in the future we may use query data to help us come up with article or FAQ ideas. 6. What data is Smart Answers collecting? We are recording queries submitted via Smart Answers to help us understand the information our readers are interested in. Smart Answers also collects anonymized user data that allows us to better understand the interests and intent of readers visiting Foundry websites. Learn more about Foundry’s Privacy Policy, and Miso.ai’s Privacy Policy. Read...

Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the controversial topics on our YouTube show or hot news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!  I like owning things. The recent AMD driver kerfuffle has me wondering what that really means these days. I’m old enough to remember when buying a physical item meant you had it for life. It would run as advertised until it could no longer—perhaps a part would break, a motor would burn out. Even then, things were mechanical enough that you could open them up and tinker, in an effort to fix them. Now with so much software required to make hardware perform intended function, that line has become blurry. We depend on companies to keep products functional. We are expected to trust that a company will support a product for a reasonable amount of time. AMD’s confused messaging around driver support for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 graphics cards shook that trust. At first, it seemed that GPUs just three years old were already getting the axe—Team Red would no longer provide updated drivers for new game optimizations. Then, after this stance was seemingly confirmed by AMD statements to the press (causing more furor), AMD finally issued a clarification via a blog post. The drivers would branch, but baseline support for first- and second-generation RDNA wouldn’t end yet. The Full Nerd crew and I discuss the whole episode in more depth in the show, including the nuances of the situation. The reputation of AMD Radeon’s division obviously plays a role in all this, as does the current environment of GPU prices and availability. But even with the resolution of this PR hiccup, the fundamental issue remains. Chromebook lifespans have improved, but that’s only for newer models. Own an older one and it’s likely EOL now. That sucks.IDG / Matthew Smith Companies can now kill their products at any time—even when you have them in your hands. Once software support gets dropped, it’s over. I have a drawer full of phones that Google and Apple no longer provide security patches for. Older Chromebooks got a similarly raw deal. You can argue that you can still technically use these products, and sure, that’s true. But in today’s environment, a lack of security patches is asking for a headache. No driver support for new games means you won’t get to play them. Etc. I’m grateful that people donate their time to alternative software, like LineageOS and Linux, to help keep perfectly usable hardware still chugging along. (I’m about to try this to breathe new life into a beloved, now-unsupported Chromebook.) But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re at the mercy of companies’ willingness to maintain a product or even whole product line. And I hate that. I’m willing to sign up for software-as-service. I think of it as renting tools. But my hardware? I bought it for its known properties. I bought it for its specific features. I bought it so it would keep doing what I needed it for. If it stops working because the software is gone, what did I actually own, then? In this episode of The Full Nerd  In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith hash out their feelings about the weekend’s RDNA 1 and 2 driver support debacle and how many Windows PC games run Linux now. On the AMD front, Brad pulls out what he thinks AMD meant to say, but can’t. Meanwhile, I get fussy about chart interpretations and headlines. Not hatin’ on Linux, just the implied takeaway in the coverage. Oh, and I get to show everyone my latest fashion acquisition. Is it fashionable? No. Am I pleased that I had a good reason to own AMD-branded socks? Kind of yes. (Very yes.)(Full disclosure: The socks were a gift from one Adam Patrick Murray. I have a whole collection of various tech-branded ones from him, possibly because I’ve talked about buying socks during Black Friday so often over the years.) Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.  This week’s stirring nerd news Might have to start handling memory with this much care, given how expensive it is to replace any that goes bad or dies.IDG Thanks to the AMD Radeon hullabaloo, everything else feels relatively quiet—despite being noteworthy. AMD CPUs helped the company hit new records, for starters. And I got pretty invested in not one, but two different robot vacuum stories. Also, I realized I’ve failed to adequately sound the alarm when giving buying advice in the last week or so. Some component prices already hurt, and it got bad so fast. (Hopefully you don’t need more memory any time soon.) Proving a point: In stark contrast to the Radeon side of things, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs remain steady, propelling Team Red to loftier and loftier heights—desktop CPU share has climbed almost 10 percentage points since 2024, according to CEO Dr. Lisa Su. This is some bull$*(%: Not the engineering to bring the robot vacuum back online, but the manufacturer’s decision to remotely brick the device. (Also, this is why we use guest networks for IoT devices.) Filed under “Asked if they could, not if they should”: Look, I’m just as guilty of doing things just to see if it’s possible. I still snort-laughed about squeezing an operating system so small, it becomes unusable. Science + efficiency = I click: Humans creating better ways to deal (and reuse) the materials they create? Sounds good to me. How far the Internet’s come: From data dropouts that cause typos to memes that load in bare seconds. (Can’t say we’ve used the improvements for best impact, but that’s a thought for another day.) Venus’s mysteries will remain so to us for a while longer.Planet Volumes / Unsplash Enjoy your privacy, fair Venus: The loss of the last remaining satellite is sad for us. I’m telling myself a planet named for the goddess of love probably needs a break from prying eyes for a bit, though. I really want to know about the 5% of humans who failed: Were they distracted during Butter Bench? Was their native language different than how the benchmark was administered? Did they just not care? And yes, I did feel kind of bad about this robo vacuum’s internal meltdown. We’ve all been there, buddy. I needed this 15 years ago: A black & white mode for Google Maps to eke out that much more battery life from a dying phone? Better late than never, I guess. (Though it’s not officially real yet.) Ouch, that hurt faster than expected: Memory prices have shot up abruptly—and it’s not just DDR4 affected. If you need more RAM right now, gird yourself for as much as 100 percent (or more) price increases. I don’t think Black Friday will save us from this. I have a secret—I’m apparently one of the lone people who likes the “fall back” to Standard Time in the U.S. The early dark evenings make stew and soups feel perfect. (Definitely come share your favorite recipes with me in The Full Nerd Discord’s #food-chat channel.) Catch you all next week! ~Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

It may be a surprise to some to learn that the Windows Start menu isn’t just a static thing. In fact, you can customize it how you like. You can pin apps and folders into it, change its color, and even arrange the pinned apps into folders themselves. Here we explain how to do each of these things. Pin your most used folders or apps Pinning your most used apps or folders to the Start menu is a good way to make your desktop clutter free and reserve it for only the most essential files. To pin something to the Start menu, right click on it and select Pin to Start. Dominic Bayley / Foundry Organize your pinned apps into folders Once you’ve pinned your apps and folders into the Start menu, you can start to organize them into folders. To do that just left click on the app or folder you want to group and drag it onto another app or folder. You can also give your folder a name. Dominic Bayley / Foundry Change the Start menu (and Taskbar) color You can change the Start menu to any custom color you want, but that will, by default, change the Taskbar to the same color. To do this, open Settings > Personalization > Colors. Select dark mode then select an accent color. Under the color palate, enable “Show Accent Color on Start and Taskbar.” Dominic Bayley / Foundry Hunting for even more tips? Check out our Windows 11 guide for Windows 10 refugees to go much, much deeper. That’s a wrap for this Try This. If you want more tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe to our PCWorld Try This newsletter. Read...

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