New Thinkpad + Vista = Sluggish Internet?

[JonathanGennick]

I could use some suggestions. My company just shipped me a new T61 with Vista Business installed. I just yesterday opened the box. I am unable to access the Internet with any degree of reliability and performance. I try to bring up a web site, and it will take several minutes for the home page to load, and sometimes I run out of patience during the wait. I went to download Firefox, and was given an estimated wait time of 5+ hours. Several times now Internet Explorer has simply locked up on me.

When I start Internet Explorer, there is this long pause with the words "Connecting" in the title-bar (I think in the title bar; need to check again) before I am finally able to type in a URL.

I finally was able to figure out how to display the status of my wireless connection (no longer a simple right-click and select "Status" operation). Even when I'm just sitting there, the bytes-received counter goes up pretty fast. The transmit counter goes up regularly too. I thought Windows Update might be the reason, so I've turned that feature off. Still, the status panel shows a lot of data going back and forth, and I can't access the web in any usable manner.

All other PCs in the house are fine. I'm writing this note on an older, Thinkpad X30.

Any clue as to why I'm having trouble with the new machine? Could Vista be the source of the problem?

I should also note that I have a very old access point. It's seven years old, and only supports the original, 802.11b standard. It's worked well for seven years. I've never had trouble with it. I mention it only because it is rather old. Could there be some weird interaction between an old access point and a new wireless card?
(My daughter's brand new Mac works fine in our house though, so I tend to discount this possibility).

I only worked with the machine about an hour before bedtime last night. I'm going to try and tackle the problem again today. I'm open to any suggestions as to what course of action to take. I could use some good suggestions about now.

[JonathanGennick]

Ok. Might be a wireless issue of some sort. I plugged in using an ethernet cable, and I get good response. That's a good sign. There's probably just some weird interaction between the wireless on the laptop and my access point that I need to sort out. Not sure how I'm going to troubleshoot that problem.

[cwestwater]

Try this:

http://www.stanford.edu/~aylin/blog/200 ... up-on.html

[SHoTTa35]

yeah, i've seen other people post about that and the above was the solution. Hopefully it works out for you too

[JonathanGennick]

Thanks cwestwater. Your link solved one of my problems. Thanks very much for that.

I'm still getting horribly sluggish performance on wireless though. For example, it took me 45 seconds to load the message listing for this forum, and 23 seconds to load the three notes above on this page. But the problem is the same in Firefox as in Explorer, so I'm convinced there's some hardware issue at the bottom of it.

I'm going to fiddle with the hardware settings for a bit. Then I might open a new thread in the T series forum.

[arni]

There has been some problems around with the new TCP/IP stack in Vista (especially with old routers and wifi-access points).

First i would try to disable TCP/IP autotuning with this command (run cmd.exe as "Administrator"):

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Here is the corresponding KB-Article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430/en-us.

Another try would be to disable IPV6 completly since your network is IP4 only. Run regedit (but be careful) and add following key to the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters]
"DisabledComponents"=dword:000000ff

More info on that here http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/libr ... n-us).aspx.

[tylerwylie]

Networking in Vista is seriously a step backwards. The whole TCP/IP stack is a frigging mess. I think the monkeys Microsoft used for their Networking stack weren't fully developed unlike the other monkeys they use to write their code.

[bill bolton]

Networking in Vista is seriously a step backwards.

The Vista TCP/IP stack is a huge improvement over the XP/W2003 stack, no matter which way you look at it!

It addresses a whole bunch of issues that just didn't work with adequate repeatability in the previous stacks.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[tylerwylie]

Networking in Vista is seriously a step backwards.

The Vista TCP/IP stack is a huge improvement over the XP/W2003 stack, no matter which way you look at it!

It addresses a whole bunch of issues that just didn't work with adequate repeatability in the previous stacks.

Cheers,

Bill B.

True, I guess I should've gone to say Networking in Windows sucks. I've had a few issues with Vista's networking though, like on an intranet in Vista I can't type "webserverhostname" to resolve the server, I have to type "webserverhostname.fulldomainname.crap" to be able to even resolve it. Stuff like that that makes it bullcrap!