Comments on: Help me fix my "limited connectivity" in Windows Vista RC2

Question: Help me fix my "limited connectivity" in Windows Vista RC2

superboy422 — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:39:47 -0800

EarlyAdopterFilter: After several happy months of running Windows Vista RC1, I've upgraded to RC2. Ever since that day, I've been intermittently getting a "Limited connectivity" error that requires my network adapter to be reset. I don't want to go back to XP or RC1, so I need to make this work.

My specs: a Pentium D on an Intel board with integrated PRO/1000 PM network adapter. Linksys WRT54G v4 router, connected over wire.

The problem seems to be worst when the connection is consuming a lot of bandwidth (particularly when using uTorrent).

So far, I've tried a few things (based on extensive research):

1. Reinstalled the network card drivers
2. Changed the advanced settings to turn IPv4 and IPv6 checksums off
3. Disabled SPI firewall on the router.
4. Installed the DD-WRT firmware (v23SP2) on my router.
5. Decreased the number of allowable half-open connections in uTorrent to 2.
6. Unchecked the IPv6 protocol in my network settings.
7. Switched from using the router's DHCP to a static IP on my machine.

After all of these things, I still have intermittent connection drops where the lovely yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it proclaims that I have limited connectivity. It seems to me to be more like *zero* connectivity, as I can't usually even reach my router once this happens.

Based on all the research I've done, I really feel like Vista's relationship with my router (specifically after the installation of RC2) is the area of trouble. I've considered going back to RC1, or XP, but I would like to resolve this issue if at all possible.

Thanks in advance for preventing me from having to reinstall my OS! ;)

By: aye

aye — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:56:37 -0800

Cross-post to Neowin. (not a call-out or anything)

By: ptm

ptm — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:25:46 -0800

You might try disabling the service called Wireless zero configuration. Click on Run, enter Services.msc, go to the bottom of the list and click on WZC select stop.

By: superboy422

superboy422 — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:27:06 -0800

ptm, thanks for that. However, I don't have a wireless adapter in this machine. Any ideas for a wired solution?

By: llamateur

llamateur — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:12:48 -0800

You could try running the following command from a cmd prompt. (Make sure you launch the cmd window using the "run as administrator" option and reboot afterwards):

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

I know that fixes some problems in Vista with particular routers.

By: Dunwitty

Dunwitty — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:12:44 -0800

What kind of errors are you seeing in the event log?