Wired Network slow - Windows 7 64bit in Bootcamp 4.0

As long as you got the latest drivers from Apple downloaded and installed. Mountain Lion would be Boot Camp 5.x and 4 was associated with Lion. New iMacs - couldn't wait a couple months I guess.

As for Parallels being 'too much' it is easier and what most use to reduce trouble - and you might want Parallels 8 now that it is out.

Fix? we don't fix. We're end users.

Feedback.

Boot Camp Assistant in 10.8.1 is where you get and download Windows support.

A VM doesn't act or feel the same yes, but even Windows users use VMs, VHDs, etc

Try Parallels 8 - no insist on it as a trial test but if they know that they can just put down their foot they will to get their way.

Games and 3D or to use more than 8GB (may be higher now) Parallels 8 has improved 3D graphics.

And once installed natively you can use the VM and still dual boot too. It uses the same OS.

Fusion can convert a Boot Camp to a VHD VM also.

You can always rollback a driver; uninstall Apple or Microsoft and yes better to use the vendor's directly. That goes for graphic and audio drivers as well as others. Apple "enables" the chipset on the motherboard if needed so that they are enabled and can have a driver installed.

Glad to hear! and your link goes into my Evernote lists for all the other driver tips out there.

Never ever touch a dot zero, unless you have to I guess :-(

When I found that I could rollback and the rest I thought I'd found a real OS I could like.

BocaDel wrote:

Has anyone tried using the Broadcom official driver in Bootcamp? Does this work any better? Or is it better to leave the Apple certified driver and wait for an update?

http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/netxtreme_desktop.php

This worked for me as well! Thank you, I was looking for the official drivers but didn't have much luck.

How does one install this driver? When I tried, I got the message that the latest driver was already installed. When I choose to select the drivers from a list of options, none of the choices look appropriate. I'd be grateful for more detailed instructions.

Hi all,

well I've been struggling this with for a week. I've tried the latest Broadcom drivers and they made no noticeable difference. Symptoms are pretty much the same, slow network performance under Windows 7. I've been using netpef to test the throughput. Basically on all of the 21" iMACs we have (core i3 and i5 based), they all seem to max out of 20MB/sec. All of the 21" iMACs use the BCM7501 controller. What is confusing on Broadcom's site is that they state the latest drivers do not support the BCM7500 and 5701 chipset and tell you to use the Win2k3/XP legacy drivers. Well I tried that and those won't install, both the 32 and 64bit versions. The latest versions do install, but offer no perf improvments over the 14.x and 15.x series drivers.

Oddly enough, I have found one 27" iMAC (core i3) which can get 90Mb/sec using netperf which is getting close to the max I would expect from a Gb network. Jus not sure what BCM Gb chip it is using. Connecting a 21" iMAC to the same network port as the 27" and I get the lower throughput speed of 20MB/sec.

I've checked lots of windows sites about this as well, and there are quite a few windows reg keys to disable windows network throttling, but none of these made any difference.

So I am at a complete loss at the moment. Our Windows 8 PCs seem ok, but they are Dells, and use Realtek NICs. I'm sure it's a windows 7 thing, possibly a windows 7/BCM5701 issue.

At this point I am open to suggestions.

Craig

Just some corrections. OSX identified the network chip as a BCM 5701 (57765-V1.37), yet under windows the Device ID for the NIC was 16B4 which according to the chart on the Broadcom site (http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/determine_driver.php) is a BCM 57765. The controller in the 27" that seems to work better uses a BCM 5764. I'll be checking the other iMACs giving problems to see what Broadcom controller they are using. It will be interesting to see if they all use the same controller. Mind you not sure what to do if they do, I suppose complain to Broadcom and hope they look into it and release a driver. Have no idea how responsive their support is though.

Craig

Hi all,

well I finally solved our problem, well I think I have. Despite trying all the things listed here, I discovered that this issue was not restricted to iMACs, it was also occurring on a bunch of Dell's running Windows 7 as well, and the Dells were using a mix of Realtek and Intel NICs. So it was not limited to Broadcom NICs. To cut to the chase I finally found a reference to these two reg key at this location

HLKM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/AFD/Parameters

Key Name Type Value

DefaultSendWindow dword 32bit fc00

DefaultReceiveWindow dword 32bit fc00

Once I made the change , rebooted and re-ran the netperf tests, the throughput went from 30MB/sec up to 90MB/sec consistently. It has so far worked on all the workstations I have tried. Interestingly enough, this issue does not occur on any of the Windows 8/8.1 PCs we tested, only Windows 7. I even went back and built a XP box, and it didn't have the issue, so it seems it was introduced in Win7 or possibly Vista and carried over into Win7 possibly. I'm guessing here that the system defaults for these keys is fc00 or something close under Windows 8. but smaller (8Kb) under Windows 7. I base this on the fact that netperf was using/reporting smaller buffer sizes (8k) when they keys did not exist, and reported 64k buffer sizes when the keys were added.

As for real life performance results (as opposed to netperf), aacess to network shares is much faster in general, some users reporting load times reducing dramatically, especially from our document management system, which is Windows based.

Have not noticed any negative side effects yet, but we are doing a controlled roll out of the keys and monitoring network load as the rollout progresses. Nothing alarming yet.

Anyway, thought I would share my results.

Craig

Craig, I was very happy to read your post, and I'm glad you fixed the problem--for you. Sadly, I saw no such improvement when I tried your fix. Here's what Regedit looked like after I added the keys:

I rebooted and had the same crappy throughput as before.

Do you think I did something wrong? Are there more clues from netperf that could be helpful? Would it be worth my digging into your original sources?