Simple change in settings pumps up Win7 networks

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	TOP STORY[/size][/font] Simple change in settings pumps up Win7 networks[/size]
	By Fred Langa Windows 7 has many good things going for it, but home networking is not always one of them. But with just two quick clicks within Win7’s Advanced sharing settings, you can improve your local network throughput by as much as 12%.[/size]

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The full text of this column is posted at WindowsSecrets.com/2010/10/14/01 (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Thanks Fred! That really helped.

I was having another problem this tweak may have cleared up: I often have a problem sending in-house email, (x@mydomain to y@mydomain). Sending email to other domains was never a problem. I am using Windows 7 and Thunderbird 2, (3 was giving me the same problem, so I downgraded, and I never experienced this with XP), and when I tried to send an in-house email through our distant domain server, the email would stop at 99% delivery and time-out. I would have to save the email as a draft. Sending the draft instead of the original always worked. The recipient, also using Windows 7 and Thunderbird, never experienced this problem on her end. For reference, my computer is standalone, plugged directly into my ISP’s Canopy wireless internet router.

Since I used your homegroup tweaks, (never used homegroup, btw), the problem seems to have disappeared. Your two tweaks were the only changes I made to the computer. I’m not sure how those tweaks may have affected email sending, but that seems to be the case. Encrypted handshaking with the mail server?

Thanks again.

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Thanks Fred! That really helped.

I was having another problem this tweak may have cleared up: I often have a problem sending in-house email, (x@mydomain to y@mydomain). Sending email to other domains was never a problem. I am using Windows 7 and Thunderbird 2, (3 was giving me the same problem, so I downgraded, and I never experienced this with XP), and when I tried to send an in-house email through our distant domain server, the email would stop at 99% delivery and time-out. I would have to save the email as a draft. Sending the draft instead of the original always worked. The recipient, also using Windows 7 and Thunderbird, never experienced this problem on her end. For reference, my computer is standalone, plugged directly into my ISP’s Canopy wireless internet router.

Since I used your homegroup tweaks, (never used homegroup, btw), the problem seems to have disappeared. Your two tweaks were the only changes I made to the computer. I’m not sure how those tweaks may have affected email sending, but that seems to be the case. Encrypted handshaking with the mail server?

Thanks again.

Be advised, Thunderbird connects to the mail server via SSH. Every version of Outlook I’ve run does not! While this helps get an email from my internal client on a public network to an out of that domain mail server, this could cause problems when connecting to an Outlook client on the same network. I’m inclined to think this might be the reason you’re encountering this problem. Thunderbird and Outlook are completely different animals in this area of transmission to the server. Check to see if you can’t send to Outlook clients on your network, or all clients. I’m betting you can’t connect to Outlook clients from your Thunderbird client. If so, there is a protocol problem.

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Enjoyed the column. When I visited TechNet, the page that contained the download for Robocopy mentioned an even better tool – RichCopy.You might consider an addendum in the next Win Secrets.
Bob Oliver

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Very useful tip, Fred. But I have a problem. Two computers on my network connect with a gigbit switch. A third computer is wireless. One of the wired computers connects easily to the wireless one. The other doesn’t. The network program cannot “find the network path.” What can I do to correct this?

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Very useful tip, Fred. But I have a problem. Two computers on my network connect with a gigbit switch. A third computer is wireless. One of the wired computers connects easily to the wireless one. The other doesn’t. The network program cannot “find the network path.” What can I do to correct this?

Check to see that the computer you can’t communicate with is not on a different subnet. A switch is a layer 2 device, (Data Link layer) and cannot pass packets between subnets without a router which is a layer 3, (network layer), device. I am pretty sure that you will find that computer is not on the same subnet as the other two are. See to it that the third computer is assigned an IP address within the subnet the other two are and you should see it and be able to communicate with it. Also see to it that the three computers are on the same VLAN if that is set up. You need a router to pass packets between VLAN’s. Finally see to it that the interface connected to the computer you cannot see or communicate with is up. If it is not, you won’t get any network traffic at all on that computer. I hope this helps!

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Just wanted to mention another optional change that solved a rather serious dropped packet problem on my home network – turning off the TCP/IPv6 option for your active NIC…it seems if your router doesn’t support the function and windows 7 tries to use it for whatever reason it causes problems.

Kris

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I also experienced slow transfers after switching to Windows 7. Network transfers started off at a decent speed (15 MB/s) but very quickly diminishing and then even disconnecting. Thanks to the below tips I have my regular pre-Win7 transfer speeds back (20-22 MB/s on a Gigabit connection). I thought I’d share these tips here!

Disable TCP AutoTuning and Receive Side Scaling

[*]Open a command prompt with administrator rights. Enter these commands:
[*]netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
[*]netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled

Disable Remote Differential Compression

[*]Click Start – Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows features on or off
[*]Uncheck ‘Remote Differential Compression’ and click OK

Reboot!

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I also experienced slow transfers after switching to Windows 7. Network transfers started off at a decent speed (15 MB/s) but very quickly diminishing and then even disconnecting. Thanks to the below tips I have my regular pre-Win7 transfer speeds back (20-22 MB/s on a Gigabit connection). I thought I’d share these tips here!

Disable TCP AutoTuning and Receive Side Scaling

[*]Open a command prompt with administrator rights. Enter these commands:
[*]netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
[*]netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled

Disable Remote Differential Compression

[*]Click Start – Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows features on or off
[*]Uncheck ‘Remote Differential Compression’ and click OK

Reboot!

I have the best luck with disabling IPv6… will look into these settings more… Do you have any more detail on why they need to be disabled?

W7 prefers IPv6 over IPv4 even if you don’t have anything else IPv6 to communicate with. Even long after log in W7 tries to use it on all new connections (it seams)

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Will Fred Langa’s tips make any difference to my set up ?. 1 desktop & 1 laptop, both W7 Home Premium, I don’t need to connect to any network.

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Will Fred Langa’s tips make any difference to my set up ?. 1 desktop & 1 laptop, both W7 Home Premium, I don’t need to connect to any network.

Hi Roderunner,

If you have no home network, and connect only to the Internet, then you should not see any of the slowdown problems described by Fred. I have not seen any of the problems myself, whether on my home network (and I play with Homegroups) or connecting to the Internet. The problems he described affect communication between networked computers.

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Fred,
I “knew” I didn’t want Homegroups, and thought I’d set all of my Win7 machines as you suggested (though I didn’t know about the 128-bit setting). However, while reading your article using my laptop, I thought “Why not check out the settings, particularly as Fred has shown us exactly where to look?” Surprise — I’d forgotten to set the laptop (I even had Homegroups enabled!), and was curious why it sometimes had “connection issues”. Bravo, and thanks!

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Thanks Gerald, My connection is slow enough, under 2 MB due to local exchange not being digital yet.

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Anyone know if these settings would also apply to Windows Server 2008?

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I have a mix of XP, Linux, and Windows 7 machines in my home (I had all XP machines but have replaced some with Windows 7 machines). I applied the fixes that Fred recommended on the Windows 7 machines, and now I can see all of the machines from my XP machine…a big help. I still have a problem though. When I go to a Windows 7 machine (using Network Places), and click on C, I get a message, ” ComputerNameC is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied.”

It goes without saying that, when I was only dealing with XP machines, I had no problems of this sort. I am the only administrator around. They are all my computers. I have them all set up without logins. I believe that I have set all of the drives to share.

Any further advice?

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I have a mix of XP, Linux, and Windows 7 machines in my home (I had all XP machines but have replaced some with Windows 7 machines). I applied the fixes that Fred recommended on the Windows 7 machines, and now I can see all of the machines from my XP machine…a big help. I still have a problem though. When I go to a Windows 7 machine (using Network Places), and click on C, I get a message, ” ComputerNameC is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied.”

Hi Monty,

Check out this How To Geek article titled Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP. It has been a great help to many. See if this provides any resolution.

Be sure to also right click your C: drive in Windows 7 Explorer, and select the Security tab. Then make sure that Everyone is added to the permissions list with whatever permissions you want to grant over your network to everyone. Also click the Sharing tab Advanced Sharing – Permissions button to grant appropriate permissions to Everyone.

Note that if you grant full control to Everyone your network will be less secure. It would be better to limit permissions to select folders on your Windows 7 machines rather than the entire drive.

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Ok! First, to the Internet from my wireless Windows 7 Home Premium laptop I can get sometimes 22 Mbps download speed over Cox Communications cable Internet! That is also using the highly encrypted WPA2 and AES! That is as fast as some Linux operating systems I have run, specifically Ubuntu! Windows 7 is very much faster than any other Windows operating system I’ve ever experienced! Since I have installed and run almost every one of them, that’s saying a lot! I have noticed that when transferring files to my Windows XP Professional desktop the transfer seems a bit on the slow side. To communicate with an XP machine you must set a Workgroup. A Homegroup won’t cut it. I will try some of these suggestions to see if I can increase my internal network speed. I haven’t found my version of Windows 7 trying to use IPv6 first…don’t know what that’s all about!

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Has anyone had bad effects from disabling IPv6 on a NIC? If I’m not using a Homegroup, am I correct that I don’t need IPv6? I see some IPv6 traffic on my LAN using Wireshark but it comes only from my W7 PCs.

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