Thinkpads Forum

I just got the T61P Thinkpad with Windows Vista Home Premium and am noticing very slow internet performance. This is particularly apparent when trying to stream video such as using the Netflix "watch instantly" feature. I'm not having this problem with my old laptop running Windows/XP PRO. My old laptop also has an 802.11 B wireless card so if anything I would expect better performance with the 802.11 G card on the Thinkpad. Wireless Network Status is showing a signal quality of excellent and a speed of 54.0 mbps. I am getting far from excellent quality over the Internet though. Any ideas? Thanks.
- Bruce

How fast is your internet connection? Streaming a movie from netflix requires quite a bit of bandwidth.

STRYPER wrote:How fast is your internet connection? Streaming a movie from netflix requires quite a bit of bandwidth.

I have a Comcast high speed Internet connection. This connection has plenty of bandwidth to stream Netflix movies using my old Dell laptop running Windows/XP. I only have a problem if I try to use my new Thinkpad T61P running Windows Vista Home Premium.
- Bruce

Check this article on "Vista Multimedia Playback and Network Throughput" from Mark Russinovich:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovic ... 33290.aspx

Vista SP1 should fix this problem, but I must say that I have Vista x64 (without sp1) and I can still view heavy streaming video without a problem. On the other hand I did install all the pre-sp1 hotfixes, so I suggest you that you also check this site as well: http://aaron-kelley.net/downloads/hotfi ... xpand=true

Most of the hotfixes in that list are not available in Windows Update.

EDIT: This problem should not really affect you, as it is noticeable on Ge interfaces, but I still recommend that you check the Vista hotfix list.

...Also check for the latest Wireless drives for your card

nurio wrote:Check this article on "Vista Multimedia Playback and Network Throughput" from Mark Russinovich:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovic ... 33290.aspx

Vista SP1 should fix this problem, but I must say that I have Vista x64 (without sp1) and I can still view heavy streaming video without a problem. On the other hand I did install all the pre-sp1 hotfixes, so I suggest you that you also check this site as well: http://aaron-kelley.net/downloads/hotfi ... xpand=true

Most of the hotfixes in that list are not available in Windows Update.

EDIT: This problem should not really affect you, as it is noticeable on Ge interfaces, but I still recommend that you check the Vista hotfix list.

Thanks. I've updated the wireless card driver and will download the hotfixes. We'll see what happens. When I got this new box I was debating whether to go with Vista or to stick with XP. I went with Vista since I figured I'd have to go with it eventually. Perhaps I made the wrong decision.
- Bruce

Ok, I've updated my Wireless card driver. I've installed the latest hot fixes. I've tried turning off the MCS service. I've also tried turning off TCP Windows Scaling which I saw in another article about slow downloads. I'm still getting lousy results streaming video on my T61P running Vista compared to my old laptop running XP. I can put the laptops side by side and try to run the same video stream. The XP laptop will start it up almost immediately and will continue playing it without pausing. With my new Vista Thinkpad, I first have to wait for buffering. The video will then pause again every 10 seconds or so for another round of buffering. Does anyone have any other ideas?
- Bruce

One other thing: This problem seems connected to the wireless card somehow. If I plug the Thinkpad directly in to an Ethernet port on the router, I don't have this problem.

I had the same problem. You have to do a clean install of Vista without the Connection Manager and all that IBM crap. My speed has tripled after doing a clean install.

djjino wrote:I had the same problem. You have to do a clean install of Vista without the Connection Manager and all that IBM crap. My speed has tripled after doing a clean install.

Thanks. I had already removed the Connection Manager. Based on another posting, what ended up speeding things up for me was to go into advanced power settings and changing the wireless setting from "maximum power savings" to "maximum performance".
- Bruce

Microsoft's Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool

If you're experiencing transfer issues with Vista, then you can check your router if it can work with Vista’s networking stack:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/ ... fault.mspx

brucegiord wrote:

djjino wrote:I had the same problem. You have to do a clean install of Vista without the Connection Manager and all that IBM crap. My speed has tripled after doing a clean install.

Thanks. I had already removed the Connection Manager. Based on another posting, what ended up speeding things up for me was to go into advanced power settings and changing the wireless setting from "maximum power savings" to "maximum performance".
- Bruce

It was all the power management settings. Seems Lenovo sets the power management of the wireless card to be very conservative twards battery life. It was painful. I was sitting with a new T61p next to two T30's searching the internet to see what was wrong and the T30's were so much faster. I was very close to blaming Vista and wiping it from the machine and putting XP in.