Extremely slow network - OEM Home Prem 64bit

The "Intel" Advanced Settings tab (the Intel logo is displayed within this tab) contains the following:

• Gigabit Master Slave Mode = Auto Detect
• Interrupt Moderation = Enabled
• Jumbo Packet = Disabled
• Large Send Offload V2 (IPv4) = Enabled
• Large Send Offload V2 (IPv6) = Enabled
• Legacy Switch Compatibility Mode = Disabled
• Locally Administered Address = "" (the information box says this is for customizing the MAC address)
• Log Link State Event = Enabled

Offloading Options:

• Checksum IPv4 Offload = Rx & Tx Enabled
• Checksum TCP v4 Offload = Rx & Tx Enabled
• Checksum TCP v6 Offload = Rx & Tx Enabled
• Checksum UDP v4 Offload = Rx & Tx Enabled
• Checksum UDP v6 Offload = Rx & Tx Enabled

Performance Options:

• Adaptive Inter-Frame Spacing = Disabled
• Flow Control = Tx & Rx Enabled
• Interrupt Moderation Rate = Adaptive
• Receive Buffers = 256
• Transmit Buffers = 512

• Priority & VLAN = Priority & VLAN Enabled
• Receive Side Scaling = Enabled
• Receive Side Scaling Queues = 1
• Wait For Link = Auto Detect

I'm not seeing any direct settings for duplex here, but there is an "Intel" tab called Link Speed and under this, the setting is Auto Negotiation.

samuria said:

How are you getting these speeds from interent download which doesnt tell the whole story what do you get if you do it on local network as it may a internet problem not the network. What is your mtu set to Change your MTU under Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 richard-slater.co.uk

Okay, to follow up, I have continued trying and I have determined that this is not a hardware issue. The network speed is fine transferring data in some cases, and extremely slow for other cases. This is very suspicious.

Note that for the descriptions below, my primary site for testing was speedtest.net. I also experienced slowdowns with the popular search engines and other popular sites.

Details before my discovery


I tried re-installing Windows 7 and also tried using the USB 2.0 to 10/100 Ethernet adapter again, and the speed was just as bad with the USB adapter as with the onboard Ethernet. I can transfer files from USB flash drive and a USB hard drive on the same USB 2.0 port with proper speed, so there is no issue with the USB port or USB driver.



Nonetheless I tried the advice. According to the tutorial on MTU, this would solve inaccessible sites, not slowdowns. But I followed it anyway, and per the results from ping, I set the MTU from 1500 to (1464 - 28) 1436, for the onboard, the USB ethernet and USB Wireless adapters. None of those changes produced any result, so I reverted to the default of 1500.


I also tried setting the gigabit adapter to 10-half, 10-full, 100-half and 100-full duplex modes, and no difference. (Even if I could get it to speed up to 10-half duplex speeds, it would be major improvement!) I tried disabling all the "Offload" features as recommended by a blog, nothing. I tried disabling everything to do with gigabit, and still the same slow speed at 10 or 100 modes.


I know that this same PC and its onboard Ethernet port works perfectly fine under Windows 8, 8.1 and 10, as well as Linux Mint. This instance of Windows 7 is the problem for sure.

Just before posting all of the above, I did try transfering data from a webserver in my house using the wireless USB adapter. I was able to transfer at the full speed I would expect from the Wireless network, about 4MB/s. I then went back to using the Gigabit adapter, and local transfer went to 9MB/s - appropriate for the 100mbit port on my webserver. But speedtest.net and the various search engines were still unable to load because the traffic was so slow.

Now suspicious, I tried downloading a Linux ISO from a random Internet server by typing only the IP address, and this time, I did get good download speeds of about 300KB/s. I bet it would be faster, but that server's network throughput was much less than our 300/300 FTTH Internet service here.

Curious, I installed Virtualbox to see if the cause of slowness (if it was malware) would also slow down the virtual network traffic. I connected to the Host-Only adapter for transfers between the VM and the Windows 7 OS. My virtual machine was able to transfer a 200MB file in under 5 seconds, so the virtual network was not affected by this speed issue.

Lastly, and the most condemning thing of all, is that my virtual machine, when I switched it over to bridged networking, was able to properly load the speedtest.net web page from its own IP address, and the speed test ran at about the full 300mbit mark.

So my speed issue is one where only well-known sites are affected, accompanied by a complete inability of Windows Update to connect for downloading updates. At this point, there are only two explanations:

1. The ISO I downloaded, from softlay.net ("en_windows_7_AIO_sp1_x64_x86_dvd.ISO", which appears to be genuine, is actually a sabotaged version pre-loaded with malware that's crippling the network speed to popular sites, and blocking Windows Update altogether. I wish there was an official md5 or sha checksum so I could determine if the ISO has been altered, as it sucks that the Windows 7 ISOs are no longer available from Microsoft's website...

2. (Unlikely) Microsoft pre-set this behaviour as some sort of "kill switch" that Windows 7 versions installed in 2018 and later would be intentionally crippled, to force people to buy a new version. (Even if they were that evil, they wouldn't completely block Windows Update from connecting, that makes no sense.)


I need to know if I have a genuine ISO, but I really don't know where I can find either official checksums or known official copies of these installers. (I know it is against the rules to discuss piracy, so I will reiterate that I do have an authentic product key for this version of Windows)

UPDATE:


Okay, I have installed the more sketchy "AIO" all-in-one ISO here under VirtualBox on my Linux Mint PC. The network speed is fine using both NAT and Bridged modes for the Ethernet port, so that means the OS and my Internet modem are fine.


There must be something freaky about his PC's motherboard chipset. Something that causes only Windows 7 to experience slowdowns on all network devices, even ones connected by USB ports... Of course HP (the OEM vendor) will be of no help, they don't offer support except if we're going to buy a new PC or buy Windows 10 for it.


I'll mark this thread as solved. The mystery isn't solved, but it isn't important enough to dig deeper. Windows 8 and Windows 10 and Linux Mint work, I just thought that going back to Windows 7 would help us to diagnose the cause of issues (to narrow down to the OS or motherboard or graphics card) with a game he likes to play.