Windows 7 is a good Operating System compare to Windows Vista. It has improvements in lot of areas including network. These 6 easy ways will help to solve slow Windows 7 network problem and make it fast.
Network is a major factor in computing. Windows 7 network slow in real world compare to Windows XP. Accessing data and transferring data over network in Windows 7 is still a problem. Resolving DNS requests internally (LAN or WAN) and externally (Internet) also slow in Windows 7.
How to Fix Windows 7 network slow problem?
You can fix windows 7 network slow by following check lists.
1) Disable Autotuning
Disabling auto tuning will help much on DNS lookup and network discovery. It improves the data transfer speed also over the network. Disabling autotuning in windows 7 is very similar to Windows vista method. Read more here about disabling autotuning in windows vista.
To recap important steps,
Start command prompt as administrator, and follow the commands as shown in below example.
2) Remove RDC ( Remote Differential Compression)
This feature introduced with Windows Vista to transfer data over network in compressed format. The same RDC feature continued in Windows 7 also. Since most of the old operating systems came before vista do not support this RDC feature, it slows down network data transfer in windows 7. You can remove this RDC (Remote Differential Compression) in windows 7 by visiting control panel and programs and features. Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off’, as shown below.
Remove RDC ( Remote Differential Compression) in Vista
3) Remove IPv6 from network properties.
If your internal or external networks do not require IPv6 protocol, better remove it under network connection properties. Keeping IPv6 in your computer sometimes slows down network by trying to register IPv6 addresses, or trying to get IPv6 address, or trying to resolve IPv6. Better remove it if it’s not required.
Remove IPv6 in Windows Vista
4) Clear DNS Cache
You can remove any DNS cache from computer, so next time DNS request will be solved by updated DNS server. This will avoid your computer to try broken or changed DNS records from cache. To clear DNS cache, open command prompt as administrator and type ipconfig /flushdns
Ceaer DNS Cache in Vista
5) Disable Wireless Network and any additional (including Virtual adapters) network adapters.
If you will not be using wireless network or it’s your secondary network, I recommend you to disable wireless network in windows 7 under network connection. If it’s enabled, windows 7 computer will be trying to connect available wireless network around you, and trying to login though its network. Loading your profiles and start up programs will be slow while booting because of this.
6) Modifying Link Speed & Duplex Value in Network adapter Properties.
This step also helps sometimes when you face problem with windows 7 network slow. I can’t say which option will work better, because it depends on your physical network setup (network adapter, cable type, LAN speed and network switch). By default it is set for Auto Negotiation. But you can play around with Value options and find out which is working better for your computer and network.
I’m sure above steps will help to solve windows 7 network slow. Feel free to suggest any additional steps you did to solve windows 7 network slow, or problems you face to fix it.
I had major problems with network speed from my Ubuntu Server to my Windows 7 Pro HTPC. I, at best, 7MB/s.
I tried these settings on my HTPC and speeds are now at 40MB/s.
My Windows XP-computer is still slow at 20MB/s though…
awesome tweaks,, i had already turned off IPv6,as its a security risk, says my symantec, and i dont use it anyways, also the netswitch always runs better set to exactly what ur router/net runs, the auto tune disable really unlocks some speed for my win7ultimate,, and the RDC seems to help,, thanks for the tip on dns flush.. i always forget to do that! ..
very good job, hope others get some speed increases also,, off to test gaming now… thanks from us at smakdeluxe!!
I’m logged in as admin but get an error on step 1. Disable Autotuning. Win7 says im not Admin.. I’ve double checked permissions and rebooted.. I’m not sure what else to try. Anybody have any ideas?
@Mike, even if you logged in as administrator or member of administrators, right click on command prompt and select Run as administrator option. Windows Vista or Windows 7 UAC works like it. Let me know if this helps you.
I fixed my slow browsing problem entirely. I am running a Windows 2003 32-bit server with six USB drives hanging off shared on a 100Mb LAN.
I’ve got a Windows7 Enterprise X64 laptop that was driving me crazy as I tried to browse the shares. XP was lightning fast, and another Windows7 x86 32-bit machine had no trouble. By my laptop was painfully slow browsing the SMB shares. I took a clue from a post that mentioned “Group” as being the source of the problem, and indeed that was my problem, but making it stick took one more step.
First, fire up Windows Explorer by clicking on My Computer. Make sure you are browsing folders so that you have a left and right pane. Click on a share in the left pane and verify that things are still slow in the right pane. Right-click on the right pane and pay attention to the “Group By” option — you will probably see that it’s set to Group By Name, or Ascending, or whatever, but you’ll see that the None option is not selected.
There’s the problem, but to fix you have to first browse a LOCAL drive in the left pane to populate the right pane (the share is too slow, right?). For example, click on C: in the left pane, which should populate the right pane immediately (local disk, right?) then in the right pane Right-Click on Group By and Select NONE.
To make this stick for EVERY Explorer session you have to click on the Organize menu, then Folder and Search Option, then the View tab, then Apply to Folders. You’ll be asked to confirm.
What you’ve done is to set every Explorer by default not to Group By anything in the right hand pane. This tells Explorer to stop trying to get meta data from each file as it browses your share points.
I would be surprised if this did not improve your file share browsing.
Brilliant tutorial, thanks. I’m using Windows 7 and it helped me.
I’ve tried all the steps above. My WLAN w7 to w7 transfer speeds are still poor 300-500k. Its a 54mbit connection i expect atleast around 5meg. Microshiit software.