I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.
Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.
Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail’ It all comes down to Vista’s ‘Auto Tuning‘ feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.
Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..
photo credit: jpctalbot
At the Start menu type command, but don’t launch the command prompt immediately. Instead, right-click it and choose Run As Administrator. Once the prompt is open enter the following command.
netsh interface tcp show global
If the line Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level does not say ‘disabled,’ enter this command:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted
If this doesn’t help, substitute this command and see if it works
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
At this moment, you should notice considerable improvements in your browsing speeds, or rather you should be cruising now. If it works, you should notice the difference in browsing speeds immediately. If it doesn’t work for you, and you feel the need to put things back the way they were, you can type this command:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal
Here are screenshots showing the whole process, incase you feel the need for it..
Good luck, hope this works for you.. Please let us know if this worked for you or not..
Doodle Jump
Pacman 80′s
Daily Horoscopes
[Tool] Windows 7 Media Center Browser
The Ultimate Home Media Center- Dell Inspiron Zino HD
{ 91 comments… read them below or add one }
hey… i’ve installed osx in my desktop too…. i download the kalway osx 10.5.2 iso got it… one problem though… osx does not recognize any of my PCI cards and my inbuilt ethernet port… so i cant get internet on my PC… any suggestions??
Where is the donate button? Seriously.
This worked amazingly. I hadn’t even realised how dampened my browsing speeds were until this. My browsing speeds have been cut in half, at least.
Thankyou so much, everything loads heaps faster now
@Umar, this isn’t the right place to post your problems with osx86.. Please post your comment in the right thread..
@Mike, glad it worked for you great. I will be writing more and more such tips in the future.. Staty tuned, and regarding donations I guess I’ll pass.. Thank you.
@LJXD, great going. Please tell your friends about this, so that it will be of some use to them as well..
@Everyone, please stumble this article so that it helps many more people..
Excellent little Hack Attack.Worked like a treat, browsing is ten times faster now! Thank you.
Wow, this actually works!
Thanks!!
Hmm. Quite interesting.
Very cool. And we thought FireFox was the only browser with tricks up it’s sleeves.
Worked great for me!!
Thanks a lot!
great stuff,
those that it has helped, could you please let me know which one of the two commands Karthik suggested that you used. Just out of interest =)
Thankyou I have a vista laptop and a dual boot osx vista desktop…this was amazing how is this not a widely known hack? Is there any negative effects of doing this?
I chose the disabled command because I felt like it.
im not sure if this has worked for me ……… i have not been on your site for a week and im a fire fox user so i used your firefox hack at the same time as doing this and my internet speeds have boosted so im buzzing im not sure if its one or the other or both but something has worked
Cheers mate
I thought i would give this little Hack Attack a try on Vista Server 2008,but it alreadt set at normal. Just another reasons to convert Server 2008 into a workstation.
@IANG
If it is set to normal then that means that is turned on. You want it at disabled I think.
Vista is a Drag. I want to like it, but it’s not much better and it’s hogs up more of the system resources. Oh well. Another Great Article!
The command prompt worked for me but I don’t really notice the difference in the speed… maybe I just don’t realise it
good work, it’s really working
holy shit lol this is awesome. i had no idea it was slow. i <3 you and i <3 me for stumbling upon this
What the Hell, It works, It really does. Eureka….
When will we be able to see a “humble” Vista workin with no need to hackin’ it??
Why Microsoft do this to us? I guess it’s just we don’t read between the lines, they want us to convert to Ubuntu.
The more I use Vista the more I miss XP, I swear if it did’t have Aero…
Hi
Half my browsing ground to a halt this morning. As did every other vista I know of around here.
This fixed it instantly.
Bizarre.
Cheers
Rich
Well, no luck. For either suggested command I get an error message:
Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation.
Since I have no idea what that means, guess I’ll live with the untweaked for now.
Thanks for the info though.
Sweet mother of God!
seriously, thank you! this helped a lot!
Worked perfectly, thanks!
Whoa, that’s incredible!
this actually, actually WORKS!! i’m always suspicious whenever i stumbleupon sites which claim that downloading this, or tweaking that, or messing with this will “speed up your computer”… and i honestly don’t know why i decided to risk it this time – maybe cos you had outlined a way to change it back in case it didn’t work and maybe all the comments – but i’m so so so glad i did.
it really does bloody well work!
the difference is actually noticeable, and not just if your a tech-head, even if your just someone who surfs on and off… trust me you’ll notice the difference. sites literally just “snap” on!
well done and big thumbs up… way up!
I also got
‘Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation.’
for both
it really does seem to make an improvement. I had no idea that it was the computer, I just assumed it was my DSL connection that seemed slower. Many thanks!
Help. When I attempted to right click on command in start I didn’t get the option to run as administrator. What now?
I used this and my download speeds remained broadly static. I guess I’m just lucky with my router?
hmmm. no real difference here:
up/down on speed test:
normal = 9126/612
restricted = 9190/610
normal = 9211/612
not enough to tell if it was traffic at the time of the test or due to the settings. back to normal for me.
Does absolutely nothing here.
Wow, worked wonders. My already moderately fast connection is much smoother.
You’re my new best friend.
Thank you. It worked great for me. =)
“netsh interface tcp show global” gives this result.
TCP Global Parameters
———————————————-
Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled
Chimney Offload State : disabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : highlyrestricted
Add-On Congestion Control Provider : none
ECN Capability : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled
None of the other commands worked. Command says “Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation.”
??
NEED HELP!
Amazing. Thanks for this.
Noice! Thats awesome man, thanks for sharing!
but what exactly is it doing?
hey, the command prompt froze on my screen after i did this and will not respond or close….what do i do????
Wow, worked great on my laptop!
(I used disabled, with restricted the effect wasn’t really noticeable to me)
Wow!
This worked amazingly well! Streaming and browsing speeds went through the roof!
Thanks!
I went to check this and found my hacked version of Vista (eXPerience’s TinyVista) already had this disable using yet another setting: highlyrestricted. It’d be interesting to see if this makes a difference opposed to restricted.
When I typed it in, I got the following message: Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation
Has anyone else had this happen. If so, what’s stopping it.
Paul – You didn’t run cmd as administrator, did you?
yeh paul, i got the same thing, wtf is that?
cos it would be sweet as if it worked
nice trick btw, i just wish it would work for me ]=
Woah
Ok a site that used to take ages to load: miniclip.com
Now..its comes up straight away…damn wierd stuff…even after clearing the priv. data etc.
Its like lightning! Great work bro!
Stumbled upon this a few minutes ago, great instructions and an even greater result. Will favorite. Thanks!
epic win sir! thank you
little to no difference. 200k download increase and 2kb upload increase.
this worked for me. instant difference in webpage loading times. thanks alot
Wow, would be an understatement. Thank you.
Thanks – that really worked for me. Nice one.
wasn’t sure about this one…. but i tired it and has worked…. thank you!
also i would like to add I like vista… as long as you have computer that can handle it. To me it is 100% better then Xp… can’t wait for windows 7 because it can only get better.
anyways thank you again.
worked for me, thanks !!
Thanks Works Great With Vista Ultimate 32 bit
Wow, thanks! Amazing! You’re a GOD!
Sweet… thanks… this worked like a charm.. sites just pop up now. especially since my provider is puttin out 15.1mbs of internet speed to my router… sweet…
Wow! I didn’t even know vista had this crap in it! My internet is soooo much faster now!
For all the “require elevation” issues, this fix requires you to run the command prompt as an administrator.
Remember to right-click on Command Prompt in the Start Menu and use “Run as Administrator”.
I feel that this wont increase download speeds either. So bandwidth tests won’t show the difference.
It seems to be more of a connection orientated fix, so a webpage with multiple objects and multiple connections will initiate the downloads quicker.
A single download stream will initiate quicker, but as its only one stream and long running it won’t be noticeable.
great tip!
Amazing thankyou very much
Unreal that a hack actually does what it’s supposed to do. Thank you so much for writing this and thanks to whomever stumbled it.
Thanks for the tip, but how exactly do you right-click on the command prompt? The mouse is not working in that menu. Am I doing something wrong?
Oops nevermind, I found it. Awaiting results, thanks again
Excellent! Works for me. Thanks for sharing.
nice man, good job on this.
My Acer PC was already set to disable autotuning, stock.
Ok, I may be the only person who had this problem after this hack but I figure I should write about it anyway.
I am running a Vista 64Bit Vista Premium and shortly after I applied this hack, the computer simply froze. I did a virus scan and all the things we’re supposed to do but I came up with no results.
Vista went through its restore process and the everything seemed fine except for the last line that read ‘Auto Tuning Error In System Area’.
My system works fine now, but it gave me a headache beyond belief. I am not certain that this hack is the reason why it went crazy, but I didn’t make any changes other than this one.
With that said, I blame myself for doing something I didn’t need. I have 8 gigs of ram on this machine but for some idiotic reason, I thought I could totally have my browser speed be better.
Lesson learned.
PS. I am not trying to diss this hack in any way, but from what I gathered, Vista is still fragile and new to be tampered with.
It worked for me, but the other way ’round:
Autotuning was set to “highlyrestricted” by default and turning it restricted or disabling it, didn’t show any effect – but setting it to normal really increased my browsing speed.
Anyway – Thanks for the great hint!!!
Greetings from Germany
Marcus
To the people having trouble with “Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation”, elevation = Administrator (i.e. the UAC dialog prompt for elevation). In other words, you didn’t follow the directions. Left-click the Start menu, locate the Command Prompt (typically in the Accessories menu) and, while hovering over the Command Prompt, right-click. There should be an option to run that application as Administrator. You will be prompted to elevate the program prior to running it. Then try the ‘netsh’ commands again.
Greetings!!! I like this!! it worked!! I would like to have more of this as I would like to have more control over the Command line commands in Vista or any OS. I’m not only looking for stuff like this but i’m also looking for faster boot up speeds., so if you all can give me that? and accelerator speeds? then please Keep these tips comming. I would also like to change the Command line lettering to green. Can you tell me how to do that? Thanks.
Greetings again,
Can anyone tell me how to set my computer to IPv6 as opposed to IPv4? please help. I want to really tweak my computer.
Thanks much.
Woohoo!! I feel all ‘techy’….a definite 1st.
For those of you who are as computer illiterate as myself, give it a go. Mine seemed to work after using the 2nd option. I didn’t see any improvement with the ‘restricted’ option but I can see the results now…I’m impressed.
And to the lovely author-I send many thanks for sharing your knowledge, it is appreciated.
J.J.D.
x
Dude, i dont ever really do these ‘hacks’ i always see. but this looked legit, so i tried it….
I also never take the time to leave comments, but damn. I had no idea it was taking that long to load. poor Stumble Upon servers going to be hurting now i cruising this quick through pages
it didn’t work with me, gave me the following message:
Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation.
I am using windows vista Ultimate SP1, this hack works like a charm. Thanks for the share!!!
Damn, I tried giving this a stumble thumbs up but the stumble server is down, ATM =/
Amazing! I had screwed up my computer so bad that it was like typing into a vat of syrup, but this helped it move so much faster! Thanks!
Thanks for your tips.Now Iam able to Browse 20% faster
I love you for this
When I did this, and re-checked the status of the Auto tuning, it remained unchanged, and below the diagnostics, it read “The above autotuninglevel setting is the result of Windows scaling heuristics overriding any local policy/configuration.”
What would cause this?
Hi friend,
Thanks for your help..now i can feel my browsing speed is much better..thanks for supporting vista users. I would like to have more vista hack supports like this. please post.
Thankyou
Hi friend,
Thanks for your help..now i can feel my browsing speed is much better..thanks for supporting vista users. I would like to have more vista hack supports like this. please post.
Thankyou
I <3 you
right clicking doesn't give me the option to Run as Administrator, any ideas?
Great advice! I'm glad I Stumbled onto this.
If anyone has the message:
** The above autotuninglevel setting is the result of Windows Scaling heuristics
overriding any local/policy configuration on at least one profile.
It's a very simple fix.
Simply type in:
netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled
Happy browsing, everyone!
will it work 4 win 7?
works for win 7
it works. thanks for sharing.
Very nice, thank you.
Faster for my Vista, thanks
{ 4 trackbacks }