Slow download speed on old networked laptop?

Hey everyone, I have recently got hold of an old office laptop and have found that downloading stuff seems to take ages. Unless that is I do it through firefox which seems to run at normal speed. Is there something that could be in place to slow downloads? It is very slow when going through internet explorer (Around 90kbps) and as slow when flash player downloaded using its own downloader.

Any ideas guys? Many thanks in advance, Jack