Member Avatar for xioxenna

Hi guys, you're probably sick of these threads, but i'm no closer to an answer than i ever was.

ok, the motherboard is an asus, the router is a netgear. the OS is vista HmePre.32bit

all drivers are the latest.
there's no firewall running, no antivirus, no nothing.
(until i get this sorted of course)

i've another pc, same network, xp, and behaving as it should.

xp gave me aprox 600Kbs download speeds, vista's giving me 8-15kbs

using firefox as a primary browser.

What do i do? where do i start? is there anything that can be done about it?
amd x2 6000+
asus crosshair
2gig ram
8800 card
320GB hdd raid0

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by chris5126

Dani AI

Generated

Quick, practical addendum for anyone who lands on this thread with Vista showing painfully slow wired downloads while another PC on the same network is fine. The usual suspects are NIC driver compatibility and Vista's newer TCP/IP offload/autotuning features — older or XP-era drivers sometimes don’t implement the newer offload/autotune behavior correctly, and that mismatch can throttle throughput. (learn.microsoft.com)

Short troubleshooting checklist (do these in order):

  • Check Device Manager → Network adapters: note the driver provider, date and version. Prefer the motherboard/NIC vendor’s Vista (x86) driver over Microsoft’s generic or XP drivers.
  • Update the motherboard (or NIC chipset) driver from the vendor, and update the router firmware.
  • As a quick test, try disabling IPv6 (cheap, non-destructive) — it’s a common suggestion here from .
  • If the problem persists, temporarily disable Vista’s advanced TCP features to see if the NIC/route path is incompatible (below). If that helps, get a proper Vista/NDIS‑6 driver from the NIC vendor. (learn.microsoft.com)

Example commands to inspect/change TCP offloading/autotuning (run elevated Command Prompt):

netsh interface tcp show global
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled

Reboot after changes and retest downloads. If performance improves, the long‑term fix is an updated Vista/NDIS‑6 driver from the motherboard or NIC vendor rather than leaving autotuning/offloads disabled. The NDIS driver model changed with Vista, so newer drivers are required to fully support these features and avoid fallbacks that reduce throughput. (learn.microsoft.com)

Thanks to for steering the diagnostic toward the NIC/motherboard driver and to for the IPv6 test — both are cheap, sensible steps that often narrow the root cause quickly.

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Member Avatar for chris5126

wireless or wired connection, are you trying to download files on the net if so from where or from within your home network if so what os are they running firewalls etc....

Member Avatar for xioxenna

wireless or wired connection, are you trying to download files on the net if so from where or from within your home network if so what os are they running firewalls etc....

sorry, you can never quite say it all in the first post can you? it's downloading from the internet. Any server, creative.europe, fileplanet, etc. anything at all. and it's a wired connection.

Member Avatar for scru

Does your router fully support IPv6? If it doesn't you may have to turn off IPv6 in Vista

Member Avatar for xioxenna

Does your router fully support IPv6? If it doesn't you may have to turn off IPv6 in Vista

honestly i'm unsure, the netgear website says it's fully vista compatable, which to me would imply it did, i've turned it off this second, see what happens. i'm gonna guess i'll need to reboot, so i'll do it anyway.

Member Avatar for xioxenna

honestly i'm unsure, the netgear website says it's fully vista compatable, which to me would imply it did, i've turned it off this second, see what happens. i'm gonna guess i'll need to reboot, so i'll do it anyway.

no effect

Member Avatar for chris5126

so if you go to a site say download.com and download the same file on two different computers one xp one using vista both on the same router and on a wired connection the vista one will download slower? If so are you using an on board lan ie motherboard lan if so check the driver is from your motherboard manufacture not from microsoft if not update it you need help with that ask and also make sure the firmware on the netgear is updated aswell then tell me if it makes a difference

Member Avatar for xioxenna

so if you go to a site say download.com and download the same file on two different computers one xp one using vista both on the same router and on a wired connection the vista one will download slower? If so are you using an on board lan ie motherboard lan if so check the driver is from your motherboard manufacture not from microsoft if not update it you need help with that ask and also make sure the firmware on the netgear is updated aswell then tell me if it makes a difference

turned out it was the motherboard drivers that were the problem, they were the latest drivers... for xp. not vista. DOH! that made all the difference....
mind you, i got someone else to DL them for me, i found a 37.5 MB download telling me it would take 4 hours! now, at last i'm looking at 600-800Kb/s Case closed. thanks for the shouts guys, it's always the little things ya miss.

Member Avatar for chris5126

lol no worries glad it is all sorted!!

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