Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

Hi,

I'm having a very weird problem. My internet connection on my PC maxes out at 310KB/sec, however my laptop maxes out at 500KB/sec, as it should on an NTL 4MB link.

DU meter shows the true bandwidth so I know nothing else is using bandwidth. I have also tested the laptop on the LAN port and it gets the full speed. I have even updated the motherboard LAN drivers.

I have also tried a different network card and also connecting the ethernet cable direct to the modem bypassing the router all with the same results :(

It sounds like a windows problem, but what?

What on earth could the problem be? Both run XP, running through a WRT54G router.

Any help appreciated, thanks! :)

Thanks!

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

:welcome: to the forum? are both machines running without a proxy? and running the same firewall/security?

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

Are both machines running the same version of windows?

Have a looksie at http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks and see what it says for both machines.

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

I've seen similar issues when speed/duplex settings are mismatched between the workstation and the router.

Please note that "Auto" speed/duplex configs do NOT work the way most people assume. for "AUTO" to work correctly, both the router and the client network card need to be auto. If you set one side to auto, and manually configure the speed/duplex on the other end you're likely to see issues.
If your router does not have manual speed/duplex settings, then the likelyhood is it's auto - but check the docs.

just something else to check.

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

I've installed XP on to a different partition and it downloads at around 500KB/sec.

This is weird :(

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

could you not just format and start from scratch... ?

Re: Internet is faster on laptop than desktop?
 

1) Are you using the laptop on a wifi connection, and the desktop on ethernet? If so, I understand with wifi and some speed tests you can get whacky speeds showing.
2) My desktop is full of quite a bit of rubbish, and due soon for a reformat (when I feel up to doing it)
3) My laptop has newer specs than the desktop which may affect speeds