I have a simple home network consisting of two PCs which I use for file sharing, printer sharing, internet connection sharing and some games.
A couple of weeks ago, for no reason I can identify, copying a file between the PCs became extremely slow - but only in one direction. Printing won't work either, but I can still access the internet and play games.
The setup is as follows:
PC1 AMD K6-200, Generic Realtek 8029 based network card, Win 98.
PC2 Celeron 450, Netgear FA310-TX 10/100 network card, Win 98.
(Copying from PC2 to PC1 is the slow direction.)
Examining the Windows System Monitor, I see transfers of a constant 900Kbytes/sec from PC1 to PC2. Going in the other direction, I get a series of spikes on the graph as it transfers 35.8Kb every 5-10 seconds (the time interval is not constant, but the amount of data is).
I first assumed it was a hardware problem and tried swapping the two cards along with a third spare card between the PCs. I also tried the cards in different PCI slots, all with no effect. I have also tried two different cable configurations - first a crossover cable and then two straight cables and a hub (all cables except for the crossover are CAT5). Note that no collisions are occurring, even during the slow copies. Additionally, I have tried the cards on different IRQs both in situations where they are and are not sharing IRQs with other devices.
All this having failed, I turned my attention to the software. I have updated the drivers for both cards to the latest versions. Several times I have removed all the network components on both PCs, rebooted and carefully reinstalled them taking care with all settings. Still no change, so I took the drastic step of reinstalling Windows 98 on PC2, still with no effect.
Finally, out of desperation, I tried removing TCP/IP and replacing it with IPX/SPX, and all of a sudden files are transferring much faster. Replace TCP/IP and it returns. No amount of reinstalling or reconfiguring TCP/IP seems to fix it. Thus the problem seems to lie with TCP/IP and File and Printer Sharing For Microsoft Networks, but that's as far as I have been able to get.
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