Need some quick LAN performance help

[Mediaman]

1) I have a home network with a number of older machines (wired vista, many wired XP, one wired imac) and lots of wireless. that I always attempt to breath new life into ( as some are old but pefrectly fine for web browsing, checking emails, use as file servers, backups ,etc etc). See overview below. It's been a while since I've been on the forum, but last time I was on, there was some excellent tips I found to improve general network performance. Eg, turn off computer browser on all but one computer, etc., etc. Can someone point me to that area of the web site?

2) I have one XP that is giving me some challenges. Its old (P3), but overall performance is fine, internet access is fine, HOWEVER, on my own local network, its slow. Perhaps some of the tips in (1) will help. It's PARTICUALRY slow for the scenario where I have a set of web pages on the vista machine, and I am trying to access via an XP machine.. From the XP I can get to google quickly, I can access files on the vista machines quickly, but it[takes quite a while to load the webs page sitting at the IE browser on the XP machine.


3) I have an XP laptop .. again , it works fine on its own, gets to LAN and WAN fine HOWEVER, every time, even with no activity, after a few minutes, the wireless conenction drops out . I am in the same room as the access point. When this happens, I go thru a ritual of selecting a different access point, disconneting, and then reselecting the orignal access point. From then on it seems ok.

Many thanks

 

[thiggins]

1) I have a home network with a number of older machines (wired vista, many wired XP, one wired imac) and lots of wireless. that I always attempt to breath new life into ( as some are old but pefrectly fine for web browsing, checking emails, use as file servers, backups ,etc etc). See overview below. It's been a while since I've been on the forum, but last time I was on, there was some excellent tips I found to improve general network performance. Eg, turn off computer browser on all but one computer, etc., etc. Can someone point me to that area of the web site?

How To: Tips for Fixing XP File and Printer sharing

2) I have one XP that is giving me some challenges. Its old (P3), but overall performance is fine, internet access is fine, HOWEVER, on my own local network, its slow. Perhaps some of the tips in (1) will help. It's PARTICUALRY slow for the scenario where I have a set of web pages on the vista machine, and I am trying to access via an XP machine.. From the XP I can get to google quickly, I can access files on the vista machines quickly, but it[takes quite a while to load the webs page sitting at the IE browser on the XP machine.

Don't understand what you are trying to do. How can you load a web page on a browser on another machine?

3) I have an XP laptop .. again , it works fine on its own, gets to LAN and WAN fine HOWEVER, every time, even with no activity, after a few minutes, the wireless conenction drops out . I am in the same room as the access point. When this happens, I go thru a ritual of selecting a different access point, disconneting, and then reselecting the orignal access point. From then on it seems ok.

Could be any number of things. Start here
How To Fix Your Wireless Network - Part 1

 

[Mediaman]

Don't understand what you are trying to do. How can you load a web page on a browser on another machine?

I have a set of web pages ( htm files) on my vista machine, ie on \\pc01\users\public\music\reference\index.htm, etc. I share these files ( as I do other files) with other XP PC's.

On the IE Browser of the XP machines, I simply type in \\pc01\users\public\music\reference\index.htm (or P:\reference\index.htm if I have the P: drive mapped to the vista machine).

My question is that, sitting at this XP machine, I can see the shared drive and the htm files via windows explorer, with decent performance, but, when I want to view the content via the IE browser, it takes perhaps 30 seconds to load ( and says "Connecting..." on the tab). I dont have this type of delay when sitting at other XP machines, doing the same thing.