Slow network browsing in Windows

[DNA7433]

I've experienced this my whole life, but I never got around to asking about it. I've searched online before but no one seems to have ever had this problem. Does anyone know why explorer slows to a crawl when browsing through folders over a network?

I've experienced this with Windows 2000, XP, and now Vista. I currently have a router with built-in 802.11g with all computers accessing the network wirelessly - I have no wired computers. It is slow accessing XP from XP and XP from Vista and Vista from XP (I only have one Vista machine).

Internet transfers are speedy, and I'm positive if I wrote a socket application that it would be very speedy over the network.

Any ideas?!?

Thanks!

[eranga262154]

I feel this before and move to FireFox.

[Arrow_Raider]

I feel this before and move to FireFox.

He isn't talking about internet browsing and therefore firefox is irrelevent.

DNA7433-
Are you experiencing slow speeds when navigating through the network shares once you have connected, or does it just take a long time to connect? On XP, I have noticed that it can take a really long time to actually connect to a remote computer's share, but once I have connected, it doesn't give me any speed issues.

[DNA7433]

It's extremely slow for everything that I do. The initial connection actually seems fast. I have to close the Folders tree because it refreshes it every 20 seconds and that causes it to lock up for 10 or more seconds. Each directory I double-click on can take 10, 20, or more seconds to load. On a slow day the network is just unusable and I end up transfering files using a flash drive.

Over the years I've done many clean installs of windows on my various machines. Sometimes a clean install will also make network browsing on that machine very fast, but it invariably slows to a crawl after so many days (I don't know an exact timeframe because I don't use the network for file transfers all that often).

Could it be the applications I load on my computer after I've done a clean install? This would be really odd, but the only program I still install that I've had for as many years as I remember having this problem is Micrografx Graphics Suite 2. Either that or VB6 and VC++ 6.0. Everything else was released after XP shipped in 2001.

[rory]

It shouldnt be slow, if anything the connection can be slow.

[RobDog888]

It may also be your router and still the fact that wireless sucks and is allot slower. If you have bad reception or signal strength or even something interferring with the signal (weather can affect it too) your speeds will be sloooooow!

[rory]

Yeah didnt notice that, wireless could be slow for sure.
Check for other wireless devices such as phones, disconnect their power, then try it again and see if it speeds up.

[RobDog888]

You should have a reception or signal strength indicator for the client side software for your wireless card. Check to see if its strong or weak or ??? during the slow times.