How to fix slow shared network file transfer on Windows Vista

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A lot of people have been disappointed with how slow Vista transfers files on a shared network. A few solutions have come out to fix this problem but unfortunately some people are still reporting issues. Anyway, I have listed some of the fixes below - hopefully you are one of the lucky ones

Tip #1 - Is it your software firewall? I dont suggest uninstalling this straight away but perhaps you could just experiment by disabling your Norton, McAfee, AVG or whatevr you use for 15 mins or so. You should also check that Windows Firewall isn’t running at the same time as your software firewall. If you have just purchased a new Dell with McAfee installed you may find this post by Ian Lee interesting.
Tip #2 - Turn off Remote Differential Compression. To do this:
1. Click on Start
2. Click on Programs
3. Select Programs and Features
4. On the left side pane select Turn Windows features on or off
5. Uncheck Remote Differential Compression from the list.

Turn off RDC

Tip #3 - Turn off Windows Meeting Space. You can also find the option to turn off this feature under Turn Windows features on or off. All you need to do is uncheck it.

Turn off Windows Meeting Space

Tip #4 - Disable Auto-Tuning. Some people have reported that by turning of this feature there network transfer rate has improved.
1. Click on Start
2. Click on Programs
3. Click on Accessories
4. Click on Command Prompt
5. Type netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
6. Restart computer and cross your fingers
If this doesn’t work for you you can change these settings back by typing netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal in the Command Prompt.
Tip #5 - There are also a couple of Microsoft Updates for Windows Vista which may make an improvement. Here they are, Good Luck!
- An update is available that improves the performance and reliability of Windows Vista
- The copy process may stop responding when you try to copy files from a server on a network to a Windows Vista-based computer

If anybody has any other tips for improving slow shared network file transfer on Windows Vista computers then please let me know either by email, the contact form on this website or by posting a comment below.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Networking, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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8 Responses to “How to fix slow shared network file transfer on Windows Vista”

Brenden on January 11th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Very good article. Thanks.
admin on January 11th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

Thanks Brenden. I enjoyed your site as well. I have subscribed to you RSS feed.
Chris on March 11th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

crossing my fingers on this, ty for the tips though
eightbits on July 13th, 2008 at 5:45 am

Guys, i tried the autotuning trick and the “remote diffrential compression” and neither worked.
By chance i noticed that the Network interface card speed and duplex directly affect the transfer speed as when the network card is running on Gigabit i had no problem but when it was running on 100MB full duplex the problem exist, so i did some tests and here is the conclusion:

1- 10MB full duplix (Slow Transfer).
2- 10MB half duplix (fast Transfer relevant to the 10MB speed).
3- 100MB full duplix (Slow Transfer).
4- 100MB half duplix (fast Transfer).
5- 1 Gigabit (auto) (fast transfer).
Claus on August 10th, 2008 at 4:54 am

However, calculating on the speed rates it is still slow as you still not take advantage of the full (theoretic) capacity of you network interface.
But at least we can get our files across the LAN
Jack's Blog · More on my file server on September 27th, 2008 at 3:12 am

[…] 1 for Vista, and disabling a few unnecessary services that slow down network transfer speeds (see this guide). After all that, I now have a decent, centralised place to store all my data. The only […]
spartaniz on October 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm

as i posted before, not sure if it will work on any adapter, but it did increase my tansfer speeds from 200kbs to between 50 and 70mb/s! this is what i did…

go to nvidia’s website and download the latest nforce drivers, then go to control panel and uninstall the “nvidia network access manager” then when your asked ro reboot say no. then unistall all the nvidia drivers, including the display driver (thats just to make sure you uninstall all the nforce drivers, hope you have display drivers on your HDD or download the newest). ok then reboot when asked, but before your pc boots up go into the bios by pressing the del key, only if you have 2 network ports and disable the 2nd one there, just look around, you will find it. now save and exit the bios and when windows boots up and ready install the new drivers BUT WHEN INSTALLING THE NFORCE DRIVERS SAY NO WHEN ASKED IF YOU WANT TO INSTALL NETWORK ACCESS MANAGER…..NETWORK ACCESS MANAGER IS BAD!!!!! NO NAM!!!! K?????. great, restart the machine after everything is installed and when windows boots up again, go to control panel-windows firewall-(on the right pane) Allow a program through windows firewall(even if your not using it or have another installed you must do this step)-then click on advanced on the top right hand tab-then uncheck the box next to the network adapter your using, click apply and close. ok your LAN transfer speeds shoud increase alot now. but if your using bitdefender like im, youl have to do some changes in the frewall settings there, im using 2009 and cant remember if you have to do this in 2008. switch to advance view and on the right choose firewall, now click on network(the adapter name shoud show there if your connected to a network), make sure the trust level is trust all or trust local or something like that, generic is on and stealth is off. close bitdefender and restart your PC. JUST REMEMBER NO NETWORK ACCESS MANAGER AND IF YOU DONT SWITCH OF THE STEALTH ON THE ADAPTER CONNECTED TO A NETWORK THAT YOU WONT BE ABLE TO SHARE ANYTHING……

after i did what i just said my transfer rates went from 200kb’s to over 50-70mb/s. for a small improvement on speed’s you can just disable flow control on your adapter but if your lucky you will get speeds of around 5-10mb/s.

hope this helped!!!!
Bryan on October 22nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm

I was having speed issues with transferring files from my laptop to my two desktops. The two desktops would transfer at a good speed (70-90mbps), but the laptop would only transfer at around 8-9mbps. The laptop has a 10/100 interface and the desktops both have 10/100/1000 interfaces and all are connected by a 10/100/1000 switch. (Yes, the desktops could be faster, but I have not gotten around to upgrading to Cat-5e or Cat-6).
Anyway, after trying tons of things on the laptop as I assumed it was the problem since the desktops could transfer ok, it turned out that the problem was that the flow control was turned off by default on both of the desktop PCs. This caused problems with negotiating the change in speed from 1000 to 100 and therefore slowed the connection down. Turned on flow control on the desktops and *boom* 80mbps transfers to the laptop…YEAH!!!