Wired Network slow - Windows 7 64bit in Bootcamp 4.0

Hi Jeff,

Well I suppose your issue could be different. Not all of the PCs have noticeably improved from an end user experience. Basically if the test resulted in a < 5MB/sec throughput, then the reg changes made a noticeable change. On systems where they were already getting 30+MB/sec then the increase to 90+MB/sec was not as noticeable, mainly because the 30+MB/sec throughput was good enough for most of their file operations.

The bugger is there are so many reg keys that can affect the network performance. I'm on my way home now, but I'll post a followup with all the other reg keys I came across in various threads, one of them may help your situation. In the meantime I suggest you get a copy of netperf from sourceforge and run it between two PCs on your network just to see what sort of throughput you are getting. In my setup I had the server component running on a physical Windows 2008R2 server, and had the client connect to this server. The tools are fairly easy to run, just open a cmd shell, cd to the folder where the apps are and on the server just execute netserver.exe then on the client run netclient with the following parameters, -f M -H hostname. The -f M displays the results in MB/sec and -H is used to specify the hostname of the device running the netserver.exe. By default it will use port 12850 from memory, but if you have firewalls in place you can use the -p option to specify what port you want to use. If you get 30+Mb/sec then you probably wont experience much of a improvement perhaps with the exception of moving large files around.

Anyway, I'll post those other reg keys and a few netsh commands that may help you out. What NIC is in your PC? I assume you have tried updated drivers?

Another thing to try for comparison is to get the OSX version of netperf (you may need to compile it yourself) and run the tests under OSX. We did this and noticed no issues under OSX. Actually, even under WIndows 8.0/8.1 everything was fine, so if you really want to see if it is Win7 related then try downloading the windows 8/8.1 trial and see if you have the same issue. If you do then it may well be a h/w issue or a issue with your network. If like with me, it runs fine under 8.0/8.1 but not Win7 then it's most likely a OS issue and not h/w.

Oh, if you have a spare switch, it is worth putting two PCs on the switch and run the tests between the two PCs. This will remove your corporate network from the equation. Just something else to try.

Regards,

Craig

Oops. Forgot to say those keys look correct.

Craig

G'day Jeff,

Here are some of the other tips I found in various threads that purported to address the slow network issues in Win7. None of these made any discernable difference to my setup, but they may for your situation.

1. Some people reported removing the Remote Differential Connection option in Win7 fixed their issue.

Go to control panel->programs and features and select the "Turn Windows Features on or off" option.

From the list of features, deselect "Remote Differential Compression".

Reboot.

2. Always check your NIC settings, esp the speed setting and make sure it's set to auto. Udating to the latest driver can fix some speed related issues. So determine what sort of NIC you have and then go to that vendors site and look for the downloads area and download the latest driver. Do not always rely on the manufacturer of the PC (Dell, HP), they very rarely keep their drivers updated. Well that's my experience anyway.

3. There is a multimedia service that implements some form or network throttling to ensure streaming media has enough bandwidth to play without any interruptions. This is supposed to only come into effect when playing media files, but some people claim disabling the service fixed their issue. There were also some reg keys associated with it as well.

The service is MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduler Service). Try stopping or disabling it. Apparently this sevice is a dependency for the audio service, so the article suggested making this reg change to remove the dependency by removing the MMCSS option from the following reg key

HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Audiosrv/DependonService

Reboot PC.

The reg key HKLM/Software/Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\Netwo rkThrottlingIndex. Set it to 1 to start with and experiment with different values up to 100. Supposedly 1 is meant to disable it.

4. Another key, HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/LanmanWorkstation/Parameters/DisbaleBand widthThrottling. Set it to 1.

Some netsh options that are meant to fix slow network issues. Once again, these made no or no noticeable impacts for me.

- netsh int tcp set global chimnet=disabled. Reboot.

- netsh int tcp set global dca=enabled. Reboot. This is dependent on your NIC hardware, it has to support DCA. I did not try this.

- netsh int tcp set global netdma=enabled. I missed this one myself so I do not know what impact it will have, if any.

Actually this article covers these and more netsh options you may want to try.

http://betanews.com/2011/01/20/use-hidden-windows-tweaks-to-speed-up-your-intern et-and-network-connections/

As usual, try these at your own risk, and backup your registry or do a save point on your system so you can roll back to a known working state.

Good luck.

Craig