Windows Xp: Speed Up Your, Speed Up Your Network and Internet Access
I have a dial up connection and it improve my speeds about 25% in surfing the internet. give it a try. Im IT , only do it if you feel comfortable with changing registry.
Increasing network browsing speed
Does your computer slow down when you browse your local area network and connect to other computers that are sharing data? One of the most common causes of this slowdown is a feature of Windows Explorer that looks for scheduled tasks on remote computers. This effort can take some time on some computers and can really slow down your browsing. The window with which you are browsing the network may appear to freeze momentarily, as the system is waiting for a response from the remote computer.
Windows XP: Speeding Disk Access
Although this problem is a complex one, the solution is very simple. Instead of having to wait for the remote scheduled tasks, which is useless information to anyone who is not a system administrator remotely configuring scheduled tasks, you can disable this feature.