Windows Vista = very slow wireless network
I have a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad Z61p. A great machine, great performance. But Vista seems to get in its way. The first thing I did, was to re-install Windows Vista to get a clean machine, without alle the junk that comes with it. At work, the wireless network worked just fine - but when I came home, it was so slow. I mean REALLY slow. If I turned the wireless network card off, and plugged in a cable, I was flying on the Internet. But for the wireless adapter, even a page like msdn.microsoft.com could take 3-4 minutes just to load. I thought the issue was the drivers for the wireless network adapter, but later, in my desperate attempt to solve the problem, I removed a Windows feature called Windows DFS Replication service, which solved my problem. This was 4 weeks ago - and now the problem has returned. I've been reading a lot of forum posts around the web. I've uninstalled some other features, disabled IPv6, disabled Vista Auto-tuning ( i did that 4 weeks ago as well)... Nothing is working. I've also changed the default Network authentication mode, I've updated the drivers for the Intel Pro Wireless 3945abg, changed the wireless mode and a lot of things. Nothing is working. Does anyone in here have the same issues, or does anyone know what is wrong?
July 9th, 2007 3:44am

Man I got exactly the same problem. Have you fixed it yet? Microsoft should have come out a fix for this problem.
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July 26th, 2007 12:54pm

I am having a similar issue. My laptop boots up (from completely shut off, not stand by or hybernate...etc) very quickly (about 15 seconds). I log into my user and that promptly loads in about 3 seconds. Everything is functional, except for the wireless icon in the taskbar. For the following minute and a half, it continues to load. I can't click on it or get it to load any windows (like the discovered networks window). After that one and a half minutes are up, the screen flickers and suddenly I can load all of the wifi stuff (such as properties and the discovered networks window). I did a test and disabled the wireless adapter (intel mobile 3945ABG) driver and rebooted my laptop. After boot, the user loaded in the typical three seconds and then the screen flickered instantly after. The user loaded in a total of four seconds instead of the previous two minutes. After that, I re-enabled the 3945ABG wireless driver and rebooted. Once again, the user took about 2 minutes to load. Anyone have any ideas? My internet runs a but slow also. ethernet is as fast as ever, just like the first fellow that posted this topic. This is becoming quite an annoyance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
July 30th, 2007 1:05am

I have a new T60 with Vista and the intel wireless 3945 A/B/G. It is extremely slow transferring data on the wirleless network. I installed the new Intel driver 11.1.1.11 and that seemed to help the signal strength, wentfrom 60% to 100%, only 3 feet fromhub, but the performance is still dismal. Downloads at 6.5 kb/sec. I talked to Lenovohardware support and they didn't even know about the new driver. Has anyone seen a fix?? I read in one forum thathe thought it was CPwmIEBrowserHelper Object that was causing the problem, does anyone know what that is and how to correct? I have to use this system at school on a wireless network andat this speed it will be unusable.
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August 1st, 2007 11:47am

I havea new Dell Inspiron 1501 with internal wireless and seeing exactly the same thing. If I plug in a CAT5 cable and direct connect to my network, the speed issues all but go away. Wirelessly though, they are terrible when copying files - web browsing and downloading files from the Internet is fine - strangely enough. I just switched from one laptop running XP to this one and noticed the speed difference almost immediately. The wireless icon in the tray indicates that I'm connected at 54 and that my connection is excellent (go figure). Any thoughts would be wonderful! I've done all the tweaks covered here to no effect.
August 3rd, 2007 2:59pm

I picked up a new IBM ThinkPad T60P (Wide) running Vista Business, and I am experiencing the same problems with an extremely slow wireless connection. I get the same slow performance on the wireless network in my office as in my home.The second I disable the wireless and plug in the cable directly to the router (ZyXeL) everything runs perfectly. I also tested connecting an Apple AirPort to the router (via cable) and connected directly to the AirPort as an access point instead of connecting to my normal wireless network, and then everything was working just fine for some reason (almost as fast as when I connect directly to the router via cable)!The really weird thing is that I get really quick download rates on at least one website (www.dailyrush.dk) where I can download files at 1.1 MB/s (I should have 15 mbit downstream). The web pages of that website still load pretty slow though when I'm browsing. Most other websites that I have tested load insanely slowly, both when I'm just browsing the pages and when I'm downloading files. For example a 1024 x 695 pixel JPG on Flickr.com might take several minutes to load, or simply time out. The Google front page sometimes takes 15 seconds to load.I have my old laptop parked right besides the new one, both connected to the same router on wireless, and the old laptop (IBM ThinkPad T41 running XP) performs fine - downloading anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster!It also takes forever to connect to VPN, perhaps 15 or 20 seconds on the Vista laptop and no more than 2 seconds on the XP machine.When I ping www.google.com in a command prompt I get some packet loss (between 25 and 100 %) but reasonable ping times averaging about 45ms which is the same as on my old laptop.I have tried pretty much everything: Disabling Windows Firewall Disabling TCP/IP v6 and those other entries in the wireless adapter configuration that are new in Vista Disabling security on the router entirely Changing security on the router to WPA and WPA2 Changing the channel on the router (tried several available channels) Switching between 802.11 a/b/g modes on the router Booting up in safe mode (heard that worked for someone with a similar problem) Updating the wireless adapter driver to the newest version Installing all available updates from Windows Update Moving my laptop really close to the router (duh) Uninstalling MacAfee Uninstalling Bullguard Uninstalling a bunch of pre-installed IBM stuffI have come across several threads online where people have had the exact same problem and solved it by uninstalling the pre-installed MacAfee software. My laptop came with MacAfee too but I uninstalled it right away and installed Bullguard instead. When I noticed the connection problems I uninstalled Bullguard too, but little did it help.I really hope that someone can help me out here ... I'm kind of running out of ideas :-( Thanks in advance.Cheers,Stefan
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August 15th, 2007 7:10pm

Wee, finally solved the problem after struggling with this thing for a bloody week!All I had to do was change the Power Options to "Maximum Performance" both when the laptop is on battery and plugged in. That did the trick!Cheers,Stefan
August 15th, 2007 7:40pm

You may find this article useful for resolving slow network issues in vista: http://www.chapterzero.co.uk/articles/windows-vista-slow-network-issues.aspx Cheers!
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August 16th, 2007 7:20am

Stefan,You are a genius. Lenovo X301, Windows Vista Business. Exactly the same problem. Frustrated for weeks.Changing the power settings on the Wireless adaptor to Maximum Performance solved this completely. Cheers,Clayton
December 12th, 2008 4:16pm

Disabling the scaling heuristics changed my transfer rate from about 100KB over my 802.11g WLAN to 2.3 MB. A search for "netsh int tcp show global" will give you a good idea of the optimal settings.This article gives you a good idea of the netsh tcp settings: http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=2574
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December 29th, 2009 5:07pm

I have a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad Z61p. A great machine, great performance. But Vista seems to get in its way. The first thing I did, was to re-install Windows Vista to get a clean machine, without alle the junk that comes with it. At work, the wireless network worked just fine - but when I came home, it was so slow. I mean REALLY slow. If I turned the wireless network card off, and plugged in a cable, I was flying on the Internet. But for the wireless adapter, even a page like msdn.microsoft.com could take 3-4 minutes just to load. I thought the issue was the drivers for the wireless network adapter, but later, in my desperate attempt to solve the problem, I removed a Windows feature called Windows DFS Replication service, which solved my problem. This was 4 weeks ago - and now the problem has returned. I've been reading a lot of forum posts around the web. I've uninstalled some other features, disabled IPv6, disabled Vista Auto-tuning ( i did that 4 weeks ago as well)... Nothing is working. I've also changed the default Network authentication mode, I've updated the drivers for the Intel Pro Wireless 3945abg, changed the wireless mode and a lot of things. Nothing is working. Does anyone in here have the same issues, or does anyone know what is wrong? "The first thing I did, was to re-install Windows Vista to get a clean machine"- mistake1.try to install software with recovery CD's If you go to device manager you could see if you have right software install for your devices...Never push just windows operating system on any laptops,because you will lost software for devices. Only Lenovo ThinkPad Z61p recovery CD's have right software for you laptop devices.
January 2nd, 2010 10:00am

Wee, finally solved the problem after struggling with this thing for a bloody week! All I had to do was change the Power Options to "Maximum Performance" both when the laptop is on battery and plugged in. That did the trick! Cheers, Stefan Guy! You are a GOD. My system is win7 Ultimate english version! When it come out soon ,I install on my T60. but terrible thing with me is that Wireless is so slowly , look for long time with google and baidu. Today only change this option. all is ok. very thanks Cheers, Jinxingvenus
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April 21st, 2011 9:31am

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