I recently bought a new HP comp with vista premium on it. I had been running an old machine with xp pro on it. Our router is a standard issue from our local phone company, through which we have our DSL service (xyxel? 600 series). So far, our internet is running like crap, much slower than it did on the old machine. I had to install a program update and next to the install button it had a time estimate of 5 minutes for a 56 k modem and it took more than that. I have tried to run the diagnostics through windows and it says the connection is fine. The only other bit of info I have is that the lights on the front of the router are all green except for the the lights above any of the four ports I happen to have a computer plugged into (I have also tried plugging in my wife's laptop, which also runs like junk and was much faster in the same wired dsl setup prior to the change to the new hp with vista machine) and they are amber.

Any ideas? I am not particularly well versed in networking, etc. I have tried typing in the series of numbers that xxx.xxx.x.x that gets me to the control settings (my words, probably not the correct technical jargon) for the router, but I really dont know what to do once I am there. Nothing jumps out at me (there is no box to check for "make your dsl run alot faster"). The only other info I can give is that I was able to run the laptop through the router and transfer about 30 to 35 gig from there to the new comp in an hour or less, which I thought seemed a little better even though it did not show me a transfer rate. The only option that I have seen in the router settings is to return to factory/default settings, which I thought might make vista re-detect the router and I could try again...but I dont really want to do that without some input.

1) Has your vista computer been assigned an IP? (Open up a command prompt (Run -> cmd.exe) and type "ipconfig").

2) Can you ping your vista computer from the other computers? (Open up a command prompt, and type ping xxx.xxx.x.xxx, with whatever IP address the new computers is using).

3) How long does it take to transfer files between computers on the local network?

4) Are you playing any media? Vista has a "feature" that decreases your bandwidth to as little as 10% of the maximum capacity while media is playing.

Any way to disable this feature? I haven't noticed this issue, but then again I tend not to play media while doing bandwidth intensive things such as playing games.

No way to disable it. They built it into the IP stack, forcing it to only service incoming/outgoing packets at a limited rate. They have said that they didn't intend for it to limit it quite so much though, so I'd imagine at least better network/media coexistence after SP1 comes out.

Their line of reasoning is that if too many packets are coming in, too much CPU time will be devoted to IP, thus interrupting smooth playback, which is fine in theory, except that (a) many computers have multiple CPUs now, and (b) it didn't seem to be a problem in basically every other operating system.