W7 Network actons lag PC, same problem multiple PCs

[ChrisInVT]

Let me start out saying I'm an IT specialist and have been working with PCs and networks for the past 16 years. I'm not your average joe that doesn't know the difference between his router and a RAID array.

So this problem is driving me crazy to the point where I'm going to reformat three PCs and put XP on them. I'm having this problem on two desktops and one laptop; where doing anything over the network causes the computer to seriously lag. I'm talking I can't move the mouse, press any buttons, cancel a file transfer; do ANYTHING type of lag. This happens when browsing network shares, transferring files, and browsing the internet if a bandwidth-hungry webpage is loading. All three computers are running Windows 7 Pro with all the latest updates. These three computers are joined to a 2003 Active Directory domain. On the network are multiple XP machines and these three 7 machines.

One machine is an HP dx2300 that I've upgraded with 2GB of RAM and an ATI x1300 PCIe card. The other is a Compaq SR1220NX that's been upgraded to 1GB of RAM & an nvidia GeForce 8400GS. The third is an HP 6515b laptop that I've upgraded with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB 7200RPM HDD.

The Compaq is twice as fast running W7 than when it had XP on there. The dx2300 is quicker, but startup/shutdown times have quadrupled. The 6515b has slowed to about 75% of it's usual speed, but with only a sempron 1.8 that's understandable. Other than this network issue, all PCs work great. Using XP on these machines I don't have these network problems, and testing on other networks the same problems occur; so let's not get on the "it's your network/domain/internet/house/country/car you drive/day of the week/temperature/mood" bandwagon, ok?

The PCs are averaging 600-800KB of DL bandwidth over a hardwired 100Mb connection. Over wireless it's about the same. Both desktops had PCI WiFi cards in them, thinking these were the culprit I pulled both cards and ran CAT5e to the computers. Still the same problem. I've verified this with the laptop also, max connection Ive ever seen on any of the three PCs either wired or wireless was 860KB. If I boot into XP on any of the machines (I setup 7 on one HDD and XP on another so I can do this testing), I get the speeds I should. Boot into 7, and I get 800k.

Here's a rundown of what I've done:

• Updated BIOS to newest version
• Updated NIC drivers to newest version (tried both MS & Hardware vendor)
• Disabled Remote Differential Compression

After doing those three things, I'm able to get a 8,407KB speed between my DC and the PCs. But this is only for a few minutes right after the computer boots up. Shortly afterwords the speed drops down to the 7-800KB mark. I can browse network shares, transfer files, stream video across the network all fine. And then suddenly it drops to crap speeds. Mind you these are freshly installed copies of 7 with all the updates and updated drivers. I've tried both drivers from MS and drivers from the manufacturers. It seems the download speed is more effected than the upload speed, as the DL drops down to around 1,500-2,500KB from 6,500-7,500KB.

I've also noticed in task manager CPU 0 stays at 98-100% utilization and CPU 1 is about 3-8% during network activity. On the other systems without HT/dual core the processor goes to 98-100% and stays there for the duration of the transfer. Processor utilization seems to go down about 10% during uploads. Looking in the Resource Monitor, System Interrupts is what's causing the high processor utilization. During tests network utilization hovers around 7% for download and 20% for upload.




This is a typical speedtest result from when the PC first boots:

3:52 PM > =======================================
3:52 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 15MB ...
3:52 PM > Writing 15MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
3:52 PM > SEND SPEED: 6,105KB/Sec in 2.516 seconds.

3:52 PM > Grabbing 15MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
3:52 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 7,680KB/Sec in 2 seconds.
3:52 PM > =======================================

Here it is 2 minutes later:

3:54 PM > =======================================
3:54 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 15MB ...
3:54 PM > Writing 15MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
3:54 PM > SEND SPEED: 894KB/Sec in 17.172 seconds.

3:54 PM > Grabbing 15MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
3:54 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 2,560KB/Sec in 6 seconds.
3:54 PM > =======================================

Here we are, same PC in XP:

3:58 PM > =======================================
3:58 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 15MB ...
3:58 PM > Writing 15MB to \\172.72.72.101\ADMIN$...
3:58 PM > SEND SPEED: 8,263KB/Sec in 1.859 seconds.

3:58 PM > Grabbing 15MB from \\172.72.72.101\ADMIN$...
3:59 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 7,680KB/Sec in 2 seconds.
3:59 PM > =======================================

If someone can help me with this insanity, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ChrisInVT]

No ideas anyone?

Even tried updating Audio drivers with no success. No "real" W7 drivers for this exist so I've tried manually installing Vista drivers. Installing the Vista drivers over Microsoft's W7 drivers seemed to help as now it takes a few minutes for the system interrupts to kill the PC.

Here's an update:

9:16 PM > =======================================
9:16 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 20MB ...
9:16 PM > Writing 20MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
9:16 PM > SEND SPEED: 6,362KB/Sec in 3.219 seconds.

9:16 PM > Grabbing 20MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
9:16 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 10,240KB/Sec in 2 seconds.
9:16 PM > =======================================



9:17 PM > =======================================
9:17 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 20MB ...
9:17 PM > Writing 20MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
9:17 PM > SEND SPEED: 896KB/Sec in 22.859 seconds.

9:17 PM > Grabbing 20MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
9:17 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 2,276KB/Sec in 9 seconds.
9:17 PM > =======================================

 

[ChrisInVT]

Nobody?

 

[aem]

So the slowness is either due to the network or the PCs themselves. I really can't thnk of a reason for the slow network, how is everything connected together? This might be PC setup issue.

 

[ChrisInVT]

Using XP on these machines I don't have these network problems, and testing on other networks the same problems occur; so let's not get on the "it's your network/domain/internet/house/country/car you drive/day of the week/temperature/mood" bandwagon

...

 

[aem]

So are you saying it's W7 issue solely? If you are who you intro'd you are, can you explain why you think XP has no problems so W7 shouldn't? Just keen to hear what your opinnions are.

Those speed test don't mean anything to me. You are running the tests on your network, on your machines and with your hardware. The common word here is "your". I don't have issues with my downloads or speed on my network, with my hardware and with my machine, and my spec isn't any flashier than yours.

 

[ChrisInVT]

Well, it seems to be only something to do with W7 and these three HP/Compaq machines. My W7 VM doesn't have this problem, along with my pieced-together machine with W7. All three HP/Compaq machines have this problem.

That's great that those speeds mean nothing to you, maybe you need to go back and re-read anything? I don't know any network that works 100% fine using XP, and has problems under W7. It's obviously not a network problem, like I stated before. My network, my machines, and my hardware have nothing wrong with them, it's a Windows 7 problem.

If you would have read everything, you would have seen that it's the system interrupts using almost all CPU resources. How exactly is that a hardware problem? Especially when all these PCs work 100% perfect when booted to XP, and especially when they have the same problem when on other networks and with add-in network cards.

 

[Hydrology]

Hi Chris, do you have any shared drives on the Windows 7 machines? We have noticed that accessing a shared drive on a Win 7 machine through a drive map on an XP machine over a domain will cause the XP machines to slow down to snail speed (almost unuseable for file access). Once we removed the shared drives from the Win 7 machines the problem went away. If you need to have shares, put them on the XP machines or on the server, then the Win 7 and XP clients will behave.

 

[ChrisInVT]

I don't have anything shared on the W7 machines, I also don't have anything shared on the XP machines either. All my shared folders reside on the server. When transferring files they're mostly "pulled" from the server, or pushed up to the server. With these W7 machines, I've had no reasons to push up to the network shares; almost all file transfers are puled down from the server.

Here's the catch, if I push anything to the server from the W7 machines, they do not lock up. If I pull something down from the server, they lock up with the system interrupts taking 100% of the CPU.

I've also sat at the server console and done a push from the server to the W7 machine, and a pull from the W7 machine to the server, to take the load off the W7 machine's explorer for the file transfer. Same problem. When pulling from the W7 machine to the server, the W7 machine doesn't lock up, when pushing a file from the server to the W7 machine, it locks up with 100% cpu do to the system interrupts.

 

[Hydrology]

What type of network cards are the computers using? I think that it maybe a driver problem. There are a lot of sloppy Win 7 drivers out there. The OS just hasnt been out there long enough to mature. I think that HP and Compaq's are similar. They are the same company. They used to be anyway. I have a mix of Win 7's and xp's on a 2003 SBS domain and I don't have any problems with accessing files on the server shares, and I commonly work with big files in the 600 800 Mb size. I have noticed that the XP machines slow down to a crawl if they try to access any share on the Win 7 machines. This makes the Win 7 machines useless for sharing files in a mixed environment. The Win 7 machines do share files between themselves ok. I guess its Microsoft's way of forcing us to update. We use Intel gigabit NIC's on all machines, with the latest drivers. Try a different NIC and see if it makes a difference.

 

[ChrisInVT]

Yeah, I'm currently waiting on some new hardware before I do any more testing. I've thought it was a driver issue from the beginning, but I was put off to the thought since I used different cards. Come to find out, every card I used was a Realtek chipset - so now I've ordered a new NIC with a Broadcom chipset. I've read a few places that the reaktek chipsets have some problems with W7 - which would explain why EVERY HP PC I have W7 installed on has this problem.

And yes, Compaq is now a model of HP

 

[ChrisInVT]

Alright, this is a CONFIRMED problem with Realtek NICs.

I have a brand new PC I built at work:

• AMD Phenom x4 955
• 4GB DDR3
• Dual Realtek PCIe gigabit NICS

SAME FREAKING PROBLEM after a fresh install of Windows 7. ANYTHING I do lags the PC, I can only get a 3MB transfer between this machine and a file server (Both have dual gigabit NICs - I was able to utilize a trunked 2Gb connection in XP!!). CPU usage goes from 3% idle to 70% when transferring a file, and the mouse & keyboard become unresponsive.

I am stating that there is a SERIOUS problem with any Realtek NICs and Windows 7, driver & tech support is crap from Realtek regarding this issue.

 

[ChrisInVT]

I fixed it! This speedtest was done on my server, so upload/download is swapped for the actual PC in question.

6:32 PM > =======================================
6:32 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 30MB ...
6:32 PM > Writing 30MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
6:32 PM > SEND SPEED: 7,022KB/Sec in 4.375 seconds.

6:32 PM > Grabbing 30MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
6:32 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 10,240KB/Sec in 3 seconds.
6:32 PM > =======================================

What I did was install older VISTA drivers manually from this site: http://www.realtek.cz/ I used the drivers dated 2008-10-30 and they worked wonderfully! I found this out because I was researching the same problem with the Realtek NIC chipset in my PC at work. It was a BRAND NEW PC that I just built, and as soon as I installed W7 it had the same problem as the PCs I had at home. I finally found that site and tried the older Vista drivers and my 300k connection went up to almost the full 2Gb I was supposed to have (4Gb full duplex).




EDIT: HAHAHAHAHA, who was I kidding?!!?! It went back to being a piece of crap. Even after installing the new Marvell gigabit PCIe NIC, same problem. This is the result on the gigabit card:

6:57 PM > =======================================
6:57 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 30MB ...
6:57 PM > Writing 30MB to \\172.72.72.102\ADMIN$...
6:57 PM > SEND SPEED: 1,172KB/Sec in 26.219 seconds.

6:57 PM > Grabbing 30MB from \\172.72.72.102\ADMIN$...
6:57 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 10,240KB/Sec in 3 seconds.
6:57 PM > =======================================

And now this is the result of the onboard Realtek NIC:

6:58 PM > =======================================
6:58 PM > Creating temporary file chunk of 30MB ...
6:58 PM > Writing 30MB to \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
6:59 PM > SEND SPEED: 804KB/Sec in 38.218 seconds.

6:59 PM > Grabbing 30MB from \\172.72.72.100\ADMIN$...
6:59 PM > DOWNLOAD SPEED: 2,363KB/Sec in 13 seconds.
6:59 PM > =======================================

I'm going to try some older drivers. I still think it's wierd that the system interrupts kill the download to the PC more than the upload. I'm really starting to hate Windows 7

 

[ChrisInVT]

No dice with even the oldest Vista drivers. There's no reason for the NICs to fun at full power when the computer first boots up, and then several minutes later they slow down and the system interrupts kill the PC. I think I'm just going back to XP. Maybe 7 SP1 will fix the issue whenever it comes out.

 

[Perplexer]

Hi.

Every solved your problem ?

I got a similar issue. My workstation PC is running Win7 and my server is running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. If I transfer data FROM WS2008 to Win7 over Gbit, the speed drops to 5000 KB/s and the Win7 PC stutters terribly, mouse moves at 1 FPS. If I transfer in the opposite direction all is OK, speed 40.000 KB/s.

Seems to be something with Windows 7 because if I disable the LAN NIC and then re-enable it, the "down" speed will be ok .... for a few hours or for a day. Then the same speed drop and stutter occurs.

It's also interesting that this happens only when I transfer data FROM WS2008 server PC. Transfer with other PCs on this LAN (W7, XP) works fine both ways.

The thing that bothers me is that it works for a few hours if I disable/re-enable the NIC from the network connections window, and then stops again after a few hours. Sounds like it's going to be hard to troubleshoot this.

 

[ChrisInVT]

The problem eventually went away on it's own, I think there might have been a windows update patch that corrected the problem (because my laptop started working correctly also).

What are you running for anti-virus & anti-malware?

 

[GameCharmer]

Same issue here. We are running Win 7 x64 Ultimate on a Windows SBS 2008 Domain and have constant issues with insane network lag. I had to kill and restart explorer twice just today. This issue seems to come and go as well. Some days I have no network issues, and other days I reboot my PC 4-5 times before they go away. Likewise as well, I don't have these issues with Windows XP.

 

[ChrisInVT]

What are you running for anti-virus & anti-malware?

 

[surfasb]

I'm surprised you didn't check the Event Viewer. Typically, it will flag events that take longer than usual to complete.

 

[GameCharmer]

To ensure it wasn't anti-virus issues, I re-formatted the hard drive, installed a fresh copy of Win 7 and Office 2007 and still get the issues with no AV/AM. I even tried changing the network security settings from 128bit to the other setting (some odd bit count) and that still doesn't fix the weird lag issues.

I typically just run Microsoft Security Essentials, considering all of our email is filtered via 3rd party and our internet is fairly secured via our gateway.