Workarounds for Vista's Networking Problems?

tridium asks: "I recently moved into a new place where the landlord left a Linksys WRT54G v2 router for us to use. The three laptops in the house running XP connected to it fine, but my desktop, running Vista RC1 build 5600, had to be hardwired. The Internet worked fine for a bit, but I noticed some websites weren't loading up (Google, Gmail, and several others), and IM clients weren't working. Vista's self-diagnosis said it couldn't communicate with the DNS server, so I researched and it seems the new TCP stack in Vista is wreaking havoc with my router. I upgraded the firmware from Linksys, tried manually setting IP settings, modified the registry to disable TCP window stacking, but nothing helped. Linksys support was also useless in fixing the problem. I'm at a loss and any help, short of downgrading to XP, would be greatly appreciated." Other people have experienced problems getting Vista to work with off-the-shelf routers. A thread from September identifies the new window scaling feature as a potential culprit, while another article says that Vista and SPI-enabled routers don't play well together. Whether the problem is related is unknown, but another thread offers some troubleshooting tips for anyone else who may be experiencing this problem. Has anyone figured out how to disable (or at least work around) some of the more troubling aspects of Vista's new TCP 'features'?

Beta Tester

[Anonymous Coward]

Such is the life of a beta tester...

Oh, wait, you mean you were trying to use release canidate software it in a production environment (even if it is a home PC)? You found things didn't work correctly. Well, I'm sure you submitted your results through the appropriate channels at Microsoft, right?

Read the fine print next time; it's for testers and developers, not for getting a free OS for a year that works correctly in a production environment.

Re:Here's a thought...

[Aadain2001]

And in the mean time he should do what... not have internet access? I'm in a comparable situation where I plan on buying Vista when it hits the shelves for my new computer (I know, I know, I just lost my True Geek credit because I'm not going with a Linux only setup), but what do I run on it until then? I can easily run Linux, but I would like to play some games on my kick ass new video card. I could pirate XP, which may or may not work. Or I could break down and buy XP now and either buy Vista or the upgrade in a few weeks. Basically, it's a shitty time to need a new Windows based OS because Vista is only weeks away. You can't really justify spending the money on XP if you plan on using Vista, but you can't use Vista unless you use a release canadate, which brings us back to this guy's problem. Should he simply turn his computer off for a few weeks to wait for the full Vista (which may still have the issue) or try to find a fix right now?

Re:Here's a thought...

[tverbeek]

And in the mean time he should do what... not have internet access?

He has other computers; he should use one of them. Or reinstall Windows XP. That's what you do when an upgrade doesn't work out: you un-do it. Especially with pre-release software (which only an idiot installs on his only usable machine). If A doesn't work, use B which does.

OK, if your only computer is a hot new piece of hardware that you bought/built with no operating system in anticipation of getting Windows Vista, and you have no way of accessing the internet until you can get a working installation of Vista on it, you have my sympathy... for your remarkably poor planning.

Sad, just sad

[zcubed]

The editors must sit around and watch a retarded monkey for guidance as to which submissions are accepted or rejected. If the monkey picks his ass the submission is accepted and if he picks his nose it is rejected. Go ahead mod me down, this article is a joke. I had to look at my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st.

Re:Here's a thought...

[blincoln]

And in the mean time he should do what... not have internet access?

How about not running a beta OS on your primary machine unless you're willing to accept the potential consequences?

Ha ha, the usual M$ Solution.

[Erris]

For starters, try, oh, I dunno, a newer RC, if you were part of the test, or...wait for it...the release version?

Just give Bill Gates $150 and it will work, yeah right. According to the fine summary, this problem was not resolved as of September (link has Windows Vista build 5728), do you think it's fixed now? Will spending your money magically make it work?

This sort of story makes me a bit ill.

Me too, but for entirely different reasons. I think I'm going to stop reading now - I already know that I'm never going to use XP or Vista. The problems M$ creates for their own users with their little anti-competitive tricks are not fun for long. Let me translate a part of the second article for you:

The culprit is the built-in firewall software on the DI-724U router, which features Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). This is not the only router in the SOHO market that features SPI - Netgears WGR614 and Linksys WRT54GS are among dozens of products that offer similar capabilities. Trouble is, the new and improved TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista falls apart when it encounters an SPI-enabled router. One workaround is to disable SPI on the router. That significantly weakens a key layer of network security, but it allows Internet traffic to get through. Unfortunately, the D-Link DI-724U, like several other products in the same family, doesnt allow SPI to be disabled.

Because Windoze is too weak to hook up to a real network, we have a spiffy protection scheme. It's so spiffy, that it screws up Windoze spyware and that makes Bill angry, so your life will be hard. The solution is to turn off the extra security, but that's un-possible.

Then we get clowns like you ... "just buy teh boxed version, retard!" Stupid, upon broken because of previous stupid in an endless loop.

Re:Vista RC1 build 5600

[gravis777]

I have had no problems with RC2. Now I admit that I could not get GAIM to work, but this is unrelated to networking - its not that GAIM will not connect, its that it won't even freakin start. Seems to be an application error. AIM Triton, Windows Live Messanger, and Yahoo all work fine.

In fact, in my experience with Vista on two different computers on two different routers (one a Airlink, one a Linksys), I have actually experienced improved network performance over XP and, wait for it, even over Linux and OSX.

I will admit that there was a heck of a problem with RC1 and networking, I had all sorts of issues.

Yes, there was issues with RC1, that is why an RC2 was released. And there was a non-public beta or two released between RC2 and the final release candidate, and Microsoft is planing on having more patches when the final release gets released to the public on January 30th.

My advice, upgrade to RC2 or wait for the freakin release, and then see if you have issues. Don't post questions to Slashdot about issues that have already been patched.

Sure, you can do it

[Sycraft-fu]

Windows will let you add protocols to the system, and bind and unbind them from adapters as you see fit. Someone is perfectly free to write a replacement TCP stack. However as a practical matter it's unlikely to happen because the Windows TCP stack works great for most people. Yes, the /. crowd like to bitch, but then it's full of pedantic geeks that dislike Windows so they would. There's very little incentive to replace it. For the few things that need more than it provides (like Nmap), WinPcap seems to be what's popular.