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.

[haroldnov]

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

[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.

[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.

[Smoky]

Greetings Adrian

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.

[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.

[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

Network discovery requires the following:

• DNS Client
• SSDP Discovery,
• UPnP Device Host
• NetBIOS 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]

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[adrianh]

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

[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 ( 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).

[tec0]

nosleephd there you go...