Reset your Network Quality of Service setting in Group
Policyto 0 and it should fix it, by default it is set to
20%.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23090.html
Quite a few of subscribers emailed me when I said
outright that Windows XP's network performance sucks
compared to Windows 2000. I knew I wasn't going loopy. I
tested the thing backwards and forwards and XP always
came up slower. There's a reason that I didn't even think
to check. Quality of Service (QoS) is an important
function for corporations because it allows
prioritization of certain traffic types, ensuring that
there is always some measure of bandwidth available. In
typical Microsoft fashion, they've decided that they know
better than network administrators how individual
networks and clients should be configured. Right out of
the box, Windows XP slices off 20% of the available
bandwidth for QoS. The kicker is that this happens even
if QoS is disabled! Here's a quote right from Windows XP:
"If you disable this setting or do not configure it, the
system uses the default value of 20 percent of the
connection."
Gee, thanks Microsoft. And I'm willing to bet that the
guy who thought up that idea ended up getting a pay raise
out of the deal. Fortunately, this can be corrected.
First click Start - Run and enter "gpedit.msc". This will
put you within the Local Computer Policy configuration
console. Expand Administrative Templates - Network - QoS
PacketScheduler and you'll notice an item in the right
pane called "Limit reservable bandwidth". Double-click on
that, then click the Enabled radio button. This must be
enabled in order for a custom setting to take effect. You
can increase or reduce this as you see fit via the
Bandwidth limit % box. Since QoS is mainly a corporate
thing, I'm not sure of the effect on the Home edition of
Windows XP, as I do not have a copy of it to test it out.
I normally point the My Documents folder of my various
computers to a network location because it's much easier
to maintain one set of documents that is backed up
frequently. You'll remember the performance complaints I
had with that situation under Windows XP, and now I know
exactly why. I had moved everything down to my notebook
because I just couldn't live with how slow it was. Saving
a simple text file took about 5-7 seconds, which is just
stupid. It should be instantaneous. After setting the QoS
limit to 0%, I can once again live with moving My
Documents back to the network. The impact of that 20% was
very evident using the wireless network, and is
completely unacceptable. I'm not promising the world,
simply giving an example of how Microsoft has knowingly
crippled Windows XP when the vast majority of
installations will NOT be using QoS. We network
administrators are just too dumb to set that stuff for
ourselves, I guess.
