Pulling my hair out. I've read every thread and can't fix this. Here is what is happening and what i've tried:
1) all web pages load normally EXCEPT localhost which a week ago was fine too and now the pages take 5-6 seconds to load
2) my application is tiny
3) when I run a query from the command line to MySQL it returns fast..as expected. When I run a query from phpMyAdmin it's slow the same as when I request from my browser.
4) I haven't touched my configuration files for months, but I went back and made sure everything was 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost as a few threads recommended.
5) I ran netstat and check to see what else was trying to use port 80, but it seems that only firefox and dropbox and there doesn't seem to be anything else malicious or otherwise interfering.
6) I checked netstat this way after NOT being able to change my etc/hosts file because windows was telling me that another service was using it...but I couldn't resolve this and considering I've never touched this file before or changed my configuration otherwise it would be surprising to me if this were the problem.
7) I went into firefox about:config and double-clicked on network.dns.disableIPv6 and this didn't do anything.
8) around the time that I noticed the slowness firefox updated to 44.0.2; however, when I access my site on IE the same slowness exists. Around this time as well it looks like windows updated MS Office, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 and installed Microsoft OneDrive.
9) when I ping localhost from my command line it is NOT instantaneous... I get 4 packets sent and received typically varying from 7ms to 18ms.
HELP!!?
