# General Business Category > Technology Forum >  Windows 7 Networking SUCKS

## adrianh

Of course this morning the Windows 7 laptop is blind again, it can only see itself. Stupid thing......

I hate having to p1$$ around with this nonsense all the time. The XP machines never gave this much networking trouble. :Mad:

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## haroldnov

Hm, very strange...I never had any problems with it.

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## adrianh

I run 2 x Windows 7 notebooks and 3 XP machines, the stupid thing gets confused all the time. What I did find though is that when I disable 128 bit encryption and allow 40-50 bit encryption it behaves better.

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## Dave A

Try extending the TTL setting. That way the devices won't be renewing their lease as regularly and their locations on the network will be cached longer.

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## Smoky

Greetings Adrian  :Smile: 

Consider your firewall in control panel. Do some research and if you find that you don't need it to be active disable it. This will allow other network devices to communicate and have easier access. Consider a device like a smart router. allocate it the responsibility to assign IP addresses and connect this to a standard switch. The smart router will then handle internet allocation and IP allocation within the network. I recommend that you research and consider running the network wizard application and make sure that all your systems have the same basic network descriptions and settings.

unfortunately I am unable to provide you with any links or information regarding smart devices.

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## adrianh

Makes no difference with or without the firewalls. All my machines get IP addresses via DHCP from the router.

It might be a function of making the laptop hibernate in the evening and then waking it up in the morning. Maybe it doesn't go and properly research the network when it wakes up.

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## Smoky

> Makes no difference with or without the firewalls. All my machines get IP addresses via DHCP from the router.
> 
> It might be a function of making the laptop hibernate in the evening and then waking it up in the morning. Maybe it doesn't go and properly research the network when it wakes up.


Greetings Adrian  :Smile:  

*Network discovery requires the following:* 

DNS Client SSDP Discovery, UPnP Device HostNetBIOS over TCP IP [optional]

All aforementioned services must be started. Ensure that network discovery is allowed to communicate through Windows Firewall. Ensure that your Network Location are the same.

You may also need to enable your guest accounts [untested]

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## irneb

Wha..ha..ha.. yep, had same issues. W7 would work one day and see nothing else the next. Did all that and would still have same issues every now and again. The ONLY way I could get it to behave properly (all the time) was to setup my Kubuntu PC as a Domain Server grabbing IP addresses from the router. Only issue is now all PCs/Laptops need to login through the domain in order to see and be seen (not to mention the Kubuntu needs to be turned on else nothing works) - but at least W7 now behaves.

Painful that one OS makes us jump through such hoops! Never had any such issues with XP/2000/NT/any Linux.

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## adrianh

W7 is a pain. Networking sucks and they changed silly thing for no reason. MS & Apple are both heading down the toilet of destroying their own products by introducing unnecessary absurd changes and calling them "innovations" How in the hell could W8 be called innovative, maybe to child that's never used a PC before, but to an adult who went through all the versions of Windows it is simply a pain.

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## adrianh

I found a solution to Windows 7 networking that works every time. It seems that Windows 7 doesn't correctly reinitialize the network adaptor when the machine is woken up after hibernation. Every morning when I power the laptop up from sleep the network is messed up, it seems to see randomly selected devices.

The trick seems to be to restart the wireless adaptor, all the connections are established fresh and the problem goes away. I don't know whether the Ethernet adaptor reacts the same way.

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## irneb

You might be correct in that. I had a similar issue re my external HDD (a Seagate 1TB FreeAgent GoFlex). I've got lots of work files on it (Revit 3d model), which I'd open and work on. Then (an hour later) when I want to save the drive needs to be woken up (takes between 20sec an 1min depending on how W7 "feels" at the time). It actually was faster to unplug it and re-plug it into the USB port - would take no more than 5 sec to see the drive letter in Explorer, though that would sometimes stuff up file access rights - necessitating a reboot.

I tried every possible setting, including all the advanced stuff in power saving. None of them solved this issue. My solution (finally) was to write a DotNet app which simply re-writes a txt file on that drive every 10 sec. That way the drive never goes off. And BTW, this happened on my LapTop AS WELL as a Desktop, AS WELL as my work PC.

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## adrianh

I find the same thing with my external drive when it is connected directly to the laptop. I'm going to connect it through an active hub and see what it does. Could it be a USB power saving feature?

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## adrianh

I just tried the active hub and it still falls asleep, it might be a power saving feature of the drive itself.

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## irneb

Yep from my experience it seems to be some sort of power saving "feature". If you want I can send you the source code for my proggy (to be compiled using Visual Studio Express 2008 or later, or even the open source SharpDevelop). Can't attach it since the ZIP is 145kb, more than this site's max attachment size. Otherwise I could give you the already compiled EXE file, though many wouldn't trust such (as you can't see exactly what it's doing).

The proggy simply runs as an icon in the windows task bar, I added a shortcut to it in my Starup menu folder so it starts automatically. You set what path you want it to write this "Prevent Sleep.txt" file to and the interval in minutes (sorry previous post in error it only needed to write once every 10 minutes not seconds). Can be set to do the same for multiple paths through the one proggy. Uses 12MB RAM ( :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):  that's DotNet for you, could probably have gotten it much lower if I spent some time in converting it to true C++ or such).

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## tec0

nosleephd there you go...

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## adrianh

The drive falling asleep has never really botherd me because all my work are gererally smallish files that load and stay open for a while, mostly drawings. I think that if one were to code and compile on such a drive ior have database on it it would lead to much hair pulling. There must be a way to shut the service down though, it would merely be code that puts the plattrr to sleep but leaves the usb logic etc running. Another thing would be that the on board buffer memory keeping pointers into files would also need to stay awake.

Do you code in Cand do you know your way around USB?

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## irneb

You're probably correct about the sleeping happening inside the drive. It's just that I get the exact same issue with all usb drives. Same goes for a Western Digital Elements, even the usb sticks do the same thing. I've looked on the sites too, no mention of a built-in hibernation feature, much less about how to turn it off.

Unfortunately my files are at least 50MB in size, the project I'm doing right now is already 250MB (and I've only been at it for 2 Months). I've learned to copy the file off to the built-in HDD, but some of the stuff isn't that easy to do (pathings get screwed if you do this as interlinked files need to be at the same paths).

Wish I found the nosleephd when I made the Prevent Sleep in 2011. Would have saved me a few non-productive hours. Though it helped me hone a bit of C#. Anyhow, here's my source for PreventSleep: https://app.box.com/s/89qs4y1g27f680uedftd

I'm only an amateur programmer. Actually employed by an Architectural Firm (building plans, not software). I do have a BCom (Info Systems) degree where I learned programming & database management, but found that I get better payment in arch due to 20+ years experience. Have been using these things a lot in conjunction though - for the past couple of years I've been doing a lot of C# for addons to Revit. Prior to that a lot of Lisp/C# for AutoCAD, even an Open Source project for the AutoCAD stuff: http://sourceforge.net/projects/caddons/

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## irneb

> You're probably correct about the sleeping happening inside the drive.


Actually what proves to me that it's a Windows thing: I plug the usb drive into my Linux box (Kubuntu Desktop 64bit 12.04) then this sleeping doesn't occur. That's also a way of getting around this issue, though it only works at home (office PC doesn't have Linux/BSD installed so I can't do this).

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## adrianh

I was in the middle of typing a reply to you and WinSuck decided to shut the PC down right then and do an update....stooped thing...




> I'm only an amateur programmer. Actually employed by an Architectural Firm (building plans, not software). I do have a BCom (Info Systems) degree where I learned programming & database management, but found that I get better payment in arch due to 20+ years experience. Have been using these things a lot in conjunction though - for the past couple of years I've been doing a lot of C# for addons to Revit. Prior to that a lot of Lisp/C# for AutoCAD, even an Open Source project for the AutoCAD stuff: http://sourceforge.net/projects/caddons/


I do a lot of laser cutting for architects and students. It's amazing how bad some of the drawings are. I've had drawings with 64 layers in 1:1 scale and parts randomly strewn across the layers, many people don't seem to know how to use scale. Another thing is that they don't seem to realize that I am not responsible for cleaning up their drawings, all I need is a drawing drawn 1:1 in mm to be cut on the laser. They also don't seem to realize that you cannot simply reduce the true blueprint and expect to turn that into an architectural model, the concept of "scale representation is lost on them" I can't tell you how many hours I've spent removing duplicate lines and adding missing lines. I also try to lay up the parts so that edges meet and edge cuts are reduced by reducing the double edge vectors to one. One girl wanted to cut 17 sheets of Triplex into all sorts of little squares to build her model, I told her that all that's going to happen is that she is going to end up with a plastic bag full of little bits that she has absolutely no chance of fitting together....but of course 3rd year students know better.

I use Rhino V5  for nearly all my drawing because I also do 3D modelling for CNC and then simply create the tool paths within Rhino using a CAM plugin. Rhino doesn't have an "overkill command" so I do a bit of a workaround to simulate it. I convert line segments to points and then redraw those lines into polylines or curves and then remove the points and old lines. It's a pain but it is better than checking each line segment. It's one of those things that need to be automated but I've never really spent too much time on Rhino scripts & it's VBA etc.

Rhino is probable the most versatile drawing program I've ever come across. I simply do not know how anybody could use CorelDraw to run lasers because simple stuff is just so difficult to do.

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## adrianh

We finally resolved the Windows 7 networking issue today. The problem lies in both our laptop WiFi subsystems. When the laptop is woken up from sleep the WiFi connection does not seem to be re-established. That connectivity is only properly re-established when the WiFi network is disconnected and reconnected or the WiFi radio is bounced. But when the laptops are connected via Ethernet there are NO PROBLEMS EVER with either laptop. When they wake up they simply take a couple of seconds to refresh the connection and everything is fine.

I also found that the WiFi connection gives trouble when the machine is left for a while with the screensaver on, it could be that the WiFi radio falls asleep.. maybe its a power saving problem...Just checked the power saving features and the WiFi power is set to maximum when the machine is connected via the power supply...

Stoopid Acer laptops...we've got 4 of them....

We now run the laptops exclusively on Ethernet with the WiFi radios turned off. We only use the WiFi connectivity when messing around somewhere else in the house and there is no real need to be connected to the network.

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## AndyD

Glad you're getting to the bottom of it. Did you establish if it's the Acer hardware, the drivers, windoze or the wi-fi switch/router that's causing the dropping connection r is it a combination of two or more issues?

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## adrianh

It is the WiFi radios on the laptops. I installed a new driver on the one laptop and now the connectivity doesn't recover when I bounce the Radio. When I turn the radio of and put the Ethernet cable back the problem goes away. I can close and open the laptop as many times as I want the connectivity re-establishes.

I found another interesting nasty in Windows 7 Pro. I put a password on thee one and only user...me (admin). If I lock the machine or it locks because of the screensaver it asks for the password - great. When the machine boots, cold or warm, it doesn't bother to ask for the password. It happily boots and starts the machine unlocked.

I think that Windows 7 has some serious kokkeroaches... Ok, I also think that the Acer WiFi radio on my laptops have their own issues....

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## adrianh

Here is another interesting Windows 7 issues that I figured a solution for today... Seems to have been a solution day...

Ok, this is the issue: When a photograph is taken with a camera a lot of data is stored within the JPG file. This information is known as EXIF data. It stores the make and model of the camera, aperture, shutter speed, ISO value, whether the flash was used and all sorts of other camera related information. Some cameras, like my clever camera, knows the angle at which the camera was held. Generally one would hold the camera horizontally or vertically. When I take a horizontal photograph and look at it on the camera screen whilst the camera is held horizontally the image is horizontal as it should be. When I take a photograph with the camera vertically and I look at the image on the LCD with the camera horizontally the camera looks at the orientation flag and shows the vertical photograph correctly upright on the LCD. Now, when the two photographs are downloaded to Windows and I look at the two images via Windows Preview the windows simply turns the upright photograph on its side (it does not look at the orientation flag but simply displays all photographs horizontally) If I look at the two photographs using anything other than Windows Preview i.e. Photoshop, Irfanview, or any other editor or viewer, the vertically taken photograph displays vertically. We also tested the scenario on Facebook and Facebook also honours the orientation flag.. I did some reading about the problem and it seems to be a well known fact in photography circles that Windows Preview does not honour the flag. I cannot begin to tell you how many photographs I rotated because I didn't know that Windows Preview doesn't look at the flag.

I'll do a test quickly and see what happens when the camera is held at 45 degrees....

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## adrianh

Interesting...the EXIF data knows if the camera is horizontal but it cant tell whether it is the right way up or upside down. It also knows whether it is rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise into the vertical position....

...but Windows Preview doesn't care one way or another...

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## irneb

> I did some reading about the problem and it seems to be a well known fact in photography circles that Windows Preview does not honour the flag. I cannot begin to tell you how many photographs I rotated because I didn't know that Windows Preview doesn't look at the flag.


Yes, Windows' built-in picture viewer is rather poor on features.

Do yourself a favour, get something like AcdSee, XnView or FastStone. Some are free-limited, some are open source, but even the free-limited does this autorotate for you.

The 1st 2 are my favourites. They both have very good image editing / cataloguing / converting / etc. capabilities. I find them even more capable than Photo Shop if you simply want to adjust stuff like exposure / gamma - not to mention they can do these things in batch which saves time exponentially. FastStone is probably the nicest viewer I've ever come across, though it also has some of the editing capabilities of the other two.

My most favourite is XnView though: It's open source and even as standard comes with colour correction so you can even convert stuff like CMYK images "correctly" to default RGB so you don't get weird colours when placing the image in a Word document. We get these a lot with rendered images meant for printing. But as yet (even AcdSee) no other program has such a powerful batch editor as XnView - at least not that I've seen. One of it's 100's of editing capabilities in batch mode is to physically turn the JPG's data according to the EXIF info - so you can change all photos in one instruction so that even Windows' Image Viewer will then show them correctly.

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## irneb

> It is the WiFi radios on the laptops


WiFi is always an issue. It sometimes drops even without sleep mode in the picture. But I've had situations where even an Ethernet cable gives problems - both PC & Laptop connected through the router's LAN ports. Both PC & Laptop running W7 (one Ultimate the other Home Premium), if I dual-boot to something else (e.g. XP / Ubuntu) such issues go away. If I mix W7 with any other OS then the issues escalate to the point where I want to throw the Laptop against a wall.

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## adrianh

> Yes, Windows' built-in picture viewer is rather poor on features.
> 
> Do yourself a favour, get something like AcdSee, XnView or FastStone. Some are free-limited, some are open source, but even the free-limited does this autorotate for you.
> 
> The 1st 2 are my favourites. They both have very good image editing / cataloguing / converting / etc. capabilities. I find them even more capable than Photo Shop if you simply want to adjust stuff like exposure / gamma - not to mention they can do these things in batch which saves time exponentially. FastStone is probably the nicest viewer I've ever come across, though it also has some of the editing capabilities of the other two.
> 
> My most favourite is XnView though: It's open source and even as standard comes with colour correction so you can even convert stuff like CMYK images "correctly" to default RGB so you don't get weird colours when placing the image in a Word document. We get these a lot with rendered images meant for printing. But as yet (even AcdSee) no other program has such a powerful batch editor as XnView - at least not that I've seen. One of it's 100's of editing capabilities in batch mode is to physically turn the JPG's data according to the EXIF info - so you can change all photos in one instruction so that even Windows' Image Viewer will then show them correctly.


I use Irvanview and FastStone as general viewers and LightRoom and Corel Photo Paint for editing. I bought a comprehensive Photoshop project book from the CNA the other day. Time to get to grips with Photoshop. None of the software that I have shows the orientation flag in EXIF so I downloaded a tool called EXIF Pro. EXIF Pro is usefull because it is able too extract all the data, not only the significant information.

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## adrianh

> WiFi is always an issue. It sometimes drops even without sleep mode in the picture. But I've had situations where even an Ethernet cable gives problems - both PC & Laptop connected through the router's LAN ports. Both PC & Laptop running W7 (one Ultimate the other Home Premium), if I dual-boot to something else (e.g. XP / Ubuntu) such issues go away. If I mix W7 with any other OS then the issues escalate to the point where I want to throw the Laptop against a wall.


I can't say I am at all impressed with Windows 7. It has created a whole lot of problems that I don't have with my XP machines.

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## irneb

> I use Irvanview and FastStone as general viewers and LightRoom and Corel Photo Paint for editing. I bought a comprehensive Photoshop project book from the CNA the other day. Time to get to grips with Photoshop. None of the software that I have shows the orientation flag in EXIF so I downloaded a tool called EXIF Pro. EXIF Pro is usefull because it is able too extract all the data, not only the significant information.


Well, here's what I mean by XnView: It displays ALL EXIF data direct in the browsing view:


Then if you select multiple files, you get the batch editing which can include any of a number of adjustments and/or filters you can apply in any order. E.g. here I've only set it to rotate the JPG according to its EXIF data:


Not to mention it even allows editing of EXIF/IPTC/XMP data per image or batch. So you can add stuff like comments, or whatever you like. All in the one program.

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## Justloadit

> We finally resolved the Windows 7 networking issue today. The problem lies in both our laptop WiFi subsystems. When the laptop is woken up from sleep the WiFi connection does not seem to be re-established. That connectivity is only properly re-established when the WiFi network is disconnected and reconnected or the WiFi radio is bounced. But when the laptops are connected via Ethernet there are NO PROBLEMS EVER with either laptop. When they wake up they simply take a couple of seconds to refresh the connection and everything is fine.
> 
> I also found that the WiFi connection gives trouble when the machine is left for a while with the screensaver on, it could be that the WiFi radio falls asleep.. maybe its a power saving problem...Just checked the power saving features and the WiFi power is set to maximum when the machine is connected via the power supply...
> 
> Stoopid Acer laptops...we've got 4 of them....
> 
> We now run the laptops exclusively on Ethernet with the WiFi radios turned off. We only use the WiFi connectivity when messing around somewhere else in the house and there is no real need to be connected to the network.


This also happens to my some of my Windows XP machines, although not every day but every couple of days, I simply switch the WiFi router off, and in most cases, it cures the problem with out having to restart the PC

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## adrianh

The thing that annoys me about Windows 7 and the laptops is that it is a consistent on-going issue. We need to bounce the router now and again but I've never raelly had problems with XP network via Ethernet or WiFi.

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## AndyD

I've always had issues with my home network. I have 12 PC's, 5 laptops, 3 servers and 3 tablets  spread across a 4 port switch, a 24 port switch and a 4 port router/internet gateway. 4 of the PC's are on different linux OS's, 1 old development PC on dual boot DOS and FreeDOS and NT4, 1 PC on Unix, 1 PC is Win95, 1PC and 1 laptop is win98, 2PC's and 1 laptop on WinXP, 1 laptop on Vista, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win7, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win8, 2 servers running win7 server edition and one server on plain win7. The 3 tablets are on various Android OS's and my wife has a work laptop on Wn7 that occasionall comes home.

I hate my network with a passion.

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## tec0

> I've always had issues with my home network. I have 12 PC's, 5 laptops, 3 servers and 3 tablets  spread across a 4 port switch, a 24 port switch and a 4 port router/internet gateway. 4 of the PC's are on different linux OS's, 1 old development PC on dual boot DOS and FreeDOS and NT4, 1 PC on Unix, 1 PC is Win95, 1PC and 1 laptop is win98, 2PC's and 1 laptop on WinXP, 1 laptop on Vista, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win7, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win8, 2 servers running win7 server edition and one server on plain win7. The 3 tablets are on various Android OS's and my wife has a work laptop on Wn7 that occasionall comes home.
> 
> I hate my network with a passion.


It is an easy fix actually... 

All you need is an intelligent switch that is capable to assign IP addresses. Once you set it up don’t use the whole IP range “example 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.50. For your DOS systems you can use a dedicated IP of 192.168.0.60 and up. Linux and the rest of them can be setup to accept the IP given to them. 

Secondly your intelligent switch can handle your ADSL just take a single cable from your ADSL 4 port into it and still maintain the router/internet setup as is. Now your network will gel. But access permissions is going to be a bitch... 

why not just use IPX/SPX? on your desktops? It will share anything with anything basically.

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## adrianh

> I've always had issues with my home network. I have 12 PC's, 5 laptops, 3 servers and 3 tablets  spread across a 4 port switch, a 24 port switch and a 4 port router/internet gateway. 4 of the PC's are on different linux OS's, 1 old development PC on dual boot DOS and FreeDOS and NT4, 1 PC on Unix, 1 PC is Win95, 1PC and 1 laptop is win98, 2PC's and 1 laptop on WinXP, 1 laptop on Vista, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win7, 1 PC & 1 laptop on Win8, 2 servers running win7 server edition and one server on plain win7. The 3 tablets are on various Android OS's and my wife has a work laptop on Wn7 that occasionall comes home.
> 
> I hate my network with a passion.


Do you breed computers or are you catholic with 19 kids?

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