I have recently had a hard drive failure so I was forced to reinstall my OS (Windows 7).
After a fresh install, I noticed the internet speed became extremely slow (~15 minutes for downloading a 20MB file). I have installed all available windows updates and drivers.
I have a cable connection that is supposed to be 40Mbit, and this was the performance I was getting before the reinstall, as well. Between the modem and PC there is a SMC SMCWBR14S-N2 router.
I have other machines on the network, a PC with Windows 8 PRO which is connected by a lan cable and another Win7 machine that is using wireless lan. Both of these other machines show full performance (40Mbit) when downloading and also on speed tests.
What I have already tried:
- I assumed this might be caused by a faulty driver, so I tried three different NIC driver versions (Original driver from the Motherboard manufacturer website (v15.37) as well as the latest stable and beta driver from the Nvidia homepage (v15.57 and v15.58). None of these had any influence on the performance
- Changing the NIC to a different one. I had a PCI NIC lying around, so I installed it. Unfortunately still slow.
- Changed the cables.
- I also went to my ISP and traded my modem against a new one. No go.
- Swapped out all hard drives and reinstalled the OS
- Connected directly to the modem without a router
I also have Ubuntu installed as a second boot option, and experience full speed with it, with both NICs. If I go back to Windows, it becomes slow again.
Here is a comparison from speedtest.net:
I have no special software installed. This is a fresh reinstall of windows and it worked fine before the reinstall.
Here are relevant system specs:
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1.7601.18044 (Win7 RTM)
CPU Type DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 3000 MHz (9 x 333)
Motherboard Name Asus P5N-D (2 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce 750i SLI
Network Adapter Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC (192.168.2.100)
I am stumped as to what could be the case at this point. Please help.
Best Answer
To locate the problem, I would tried by order: