File copying VERY slow to/from Vista machine

[Qu0ll]

My Vista machine is on a LAN with a few other Windows machines of various
flavours and starting today all file copies to and from the Vista machine
are running VERY slowly. I am talking 2 hours to copy 30MB whereas similar
transfers between the other Windows machine are virtually instantaneous (and
the Vista machine is the most powerful).

I have eliminated a hardware problem by replacing/swapping LAN cables,
swapping ports on the router etc. so it looks like something to do with
Vista itself. Can anyone suggest what I should be looking at to resolve
this issue? I have also rebooted all machines involved.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Tiberius]

hello I have a suggestion.. but I am not sure at all if it will help...

there is an add on that enhances copy and move...
here it is:

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.asp

Tell me if this helps your issue at all... I have used similar programs for
network copies of large amounts of data...

Good luck

 

[Richard Urban]

This is a problem with Explorer that has been referenced here many times. I
am sure Microsoft is busy addressing this condition.

Until it is remedied I would suggest a competent file manager program that
bypasses Windows Explorer. Using Total Commander (http://www.ghisler.com/) I
have no such problem. When using Explorer the problem is evident.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Tiberius]

A better one is xyplorer.com not free but very very good

You might also try disabling the virus scanners on both machines..

I have seen that sometimes they make copying slower

 

[Qu0ll]

hello I have a suggestion.. but I am not sure at all if it will help...

there is an add on that enhances copy and move...
here it is:

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.asp

Tell me if this helps your issue at all... I have used similar programs
for > network copies of large amounts of data...

Good luck

Well it has helped - slightly. The estimate is now 40 mins instead of 1.5-2
hours. It displays a transfer speed of about 20KB/s which is not exactly
fast on a 100Mbps connection.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Qu0ll]

This is a problem with Explorer that has been referenced here many times.
I > am sure Microsoft is busy addressing this condition.

Why would it just start happening today?

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Tiberius]

try disabling the virus scanners on both machines..

tell me if this helped..

 

[Qu0ll]

try disabling the virus scanners on both machines..

tell me if this helped..

Yes, it helped - significantly. It now estimates 9 mins instead of 1.5-2
hours so that is great improvement. But it is still MUCH slower than the
other machines where a 30MB copy would only take a matter of seconds.

So I am not quite sure what all this means. You would expect file transfers
to be slower with AV working but THIS much slower? And why is the
transfer/copy still so much slower than a much lower-speced XP machine?

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Qu0ll]

My Vista machine is on a LAN with a few other Windows machines of various
flavours and starting today all file copies to and from the Vista machine
are running VERY slowly. I am talking 2 hours to copy 30MB whereas
similar > transfers between the other Windows machine are virtually
instantaneous (and the Vista machine is the most powerful).

I have eliminated a hardware problem by replacing/swapping LAN cables,
swapping ports on the router etc. so it looks like something to do with
Vista itself. Can anyone suggest what I should be looking at to resolve
this issue? I have also rebooted all machines involved.

I have now tried all the file managers mentioned in this thread and also
tried turning off AV. I have also run a program to fully test my NIC. My
conclusions are as follows:

1. Other file managers are much faster at copying files than Explorer.
2. Kaspersky AV tends to significantly slow down file copies over the
network.
3. Even with AV turned off and using an alternative file manager, file
copies over the network are still significantly slower to/from the Vista
machine than other versions of Windows.
4. There is nothing wrong with my NIC.

Is it possible that the slow copying of files over a network is related to
Vista's internal technology and not that it's not just an Explorer-related
problem?

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Qu0ll]

I have now tried all the file managers mentioned in this thread and also
tried turning off AV. I have also run a program to fully test my NIC. My
conclusions are as follows:

1. Other file managers are much faster at copying files than Explorer.
2. Kaspersky AV tends to significantly slow down file copies over the
network.
3. Even with AV turned off and using an alternative file manager, file
copies over the network are still significantly slower to/from the Vista
machine than other versions of Windows.
4. There is nothing wrong with my NIC.

Is it possible that the slow copying of files over a network is related to
Vista's internal technology and not that it's not just an Explorer-related
problem?

Further to this, I have now determined that if I go to a Windows XP machine
or a Server 2003 machine and initiate the exact same copy TO the Vista
machine it actually happens very quickly. It seems that the problem is only
with copies initiated FROM the Vista machine itself.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Tiberius]

Why are you wondering if vista is crap?
I have said this time and time again...

VISTA HAS PROBLEMS...

no doubt you have run into one more of them

 

[Frank]

My Vista machine is on a LAN with a few other Windows machines of
various flavours and starting today all file copies to and from the
Vista machine are running VERY slowly. I am talking 2 hours to copy
30MB whereas similar transfers between the other Windows machine are
virtually instantaneous (and the Vista machine is the most powerful).

I have eliminated a hardware problem by replacing/swapping LAN cables,
swapping ports on the router etc. so it looks like something to do with
Vista itself. Can anyone suggest what I should be looking at to resolve
this issue? I have also rebooted all machines involved.

Try this:
In the Network Connections folder, obtain properties of the connection
and clear the check box next to the Internet Protocol version 6
(TCP/IPv6) component in the list under This connection uses the
following items. This method disables IPv6 on your LAN interfaces and
connections, but does not disable IPv6 on tunnel interfaces or the IPv6
loopback interface.
That means all LAN will be using IPv4.
Let us know if this improves your speed moving files from Vista to XP.
Frank

 

[Neil Harley]

Try this:
In the Network Connections folder, obtain properties of the connection
and clear the check box next to the Internet Protocol version 6
(TCP/IPv6) component in the list under This connection uses the
following items. This method disables IPv6 on your LAN interfaces and
connections, but does not disable IPv6 on tunnel interfaces or the IPv6
loopback interface.
That means all LAN will be using IPv4.
Let us know if this improves your speed moving files from Vista to XP.
Frank

Following on from Frank's suggestion, I disabled IPv6 as well as all of
the Send Offload and Checksum Offload settings from the NIC. Once I did
that I had no problems copying to and from a 2003 Sever.

 

[Qu0ll]

Frank wrote:

Following on from Frank's suggestion, I disabled IPv6 as well as all of
the Send Offload and Checksum Offload settings from the NIC. Once I did
that I had no problems copying to and from a 2003 Sever.

I have now tried all of these things but unfortunately they didn't help -
copies FROM the Vista machine are still extremely slow while copies TO the
Vista machine are fast.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Neil Harley]

I have now tried all of these things but unfortunately they didn't help
- copies FROM the Vista machine are still extremely slow while copies TO
the Vista machine are fast.

Forgot to mention that I also set my NIC to 100/Full instead of Auto
Negotiation.

 

[Qu0ll]

Forgot to mention that I also set my NIC to 100/Full instead of Auto
Negotiation.

That didn't help either sadly.

Here are some interesting stats relating to the copying of about 30MB of
files/folders:

1. Perform copy on Vista machine - from Vista to server: 2 hours
2. Perform copy on Vista machine - from server to Vista: 7 minutes
3. Perform copy on server machine - from Vista to server: 20 seconds
3. Perform copy on server machine - from server to Vista: 20 seconds

Make sense of that.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Tiberius]

please tell me Qu0ll

what cable is this you are using?

If you made it yourself... there are some things you must know!!!
about connecting the wires!

 

[Qu0ll]

please tell me Qu0ll

what cable is this you are using?

If you made it yourself... there are some things you must know!!!
about connecting the wires!

Just a standard cat-5 cable which I didn't make myself. And I have swapped
all cables involved around on each machine and the results don't vary.

The problem seems to be something in Vista (or the way it is configured on
this particular machine) and the way it initiates and manages copies. If
Vista is in control of the copy it struggles.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Qu0ll]

My Vista machine is on a LAN with a few other Windows machines of various
flavours and starting today all file copies to and from the Vista machine
are running VERY slowly. I am talking 2 hours to copy 30MB whereas
similar transfers between the other Windows machine are virtually
instantaneous (and the Vista machine is the most powerful).

I have eliminated a hardware problem by replacing/swapping LAN cables,
swapping ports on the router etc. so it looks like something to do with
Vista itself. Can anyone suggest what I should be looking at to resolve
this issue? I have also rebooted all machines involved.

I've done a bit more research into this issue and it seems that many users
report slowness in network file copies under Vista (as has been pointed out
here but perhaps not all to the extent I am experiencing) but the really
interesting thing is that I have found reports of other users with _64-bit_
Vista having the exact same problem I have. So perhaps this has something
to do with the 64-bit implementation.

I am not saying that all users with Vista x64 will experience this problem
but the combination of a 64-bit Vista workstation mapping drives from a
32-bit Windows Server 2003 domain controller seems problematic in this area.

The upshot of all relevant discussions I have located is that we just have
to wait for SP1 :-(

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Frank]

I've done a bit more research into this issue and it seems that many
users report slowness in network file copies under Vista (as has been
pointed out here but perhaps not all to the extent I am experiencing)
but the really interesting thing is that I have found reports of other
users with _64-bit_ Vista having the exact same problem I have. So
perhaps this has something to do with the 64-bit implementation.

I am not saying that all users with Vista x64 will experience this
problem but the combination of a 64-bit Vista workstation mapping drives
from a 32-bit Windows Server 2003 domain controller seems problematic in
this area.

The upshot of all relevant discussions I have located is that we just
have to wait for SP1 :-(

If I recall, (without combing thru all of the data we collected, which
is in Excel form) during our extensive, exhaustive testing and
implementing of Vista, we installed TCP/IPv6 on all boxes running
XP/Server, etc and that fixed the file transfer slowness process.
Frank