Question Identical laptops giving different download speeds in browser, very strange.

[cbtitus]

Not sure what's going on here. My son and I have identical Lenovo Yoga 7i/Windows 11 laptops. My son noticed that he was getting poor download speeds, so we set up the laptops side by side on the same 5GHz network. Using fast.com on Edge, mine will get 450Mbps while his gets 60-70Mbps. I've checked drivers (reinstalled his), UEFI/Bios settings, network adapter settings, power/performance profiles -- all are the same between the 2 laptops.

I have a spare TPLink USB WiFi adapter, so I plugged that in for each laptop, and turned off the internal WiFi adapter. Both laptops got 230MBps from fast.com.

Other observations:
Same results with Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. All extensions off for Edge, same results.

The wireless network properties shows:
Link speed (Receive/Transmit) 1021/961 (Mbps)

When I set up a 1GB file on our Synology NAS and had his machine copy it to a local folder in File Manager over wifi, I got 400+ Mbps.

When connected to ethernet, fast.com on Edge gives 600Mbps

No QoS or parental controls set on router. His laptop does the same thing on other networks, so already pretty sure it's not my router.

No VPN, no proxy on his laptop.

It feels like download speed over http is capped for the internal adapter on his machine, but I don't know how or why that would be.

Any ideas or things to check?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bill001g]

This is looking more like a hardware issue but it could also be any software installed on the machine or even garbage from say a poorly uninstalled app like vpn.

Not sure how hard is would be to boot a linux USB image on the machines and compare them. These linux images run completely from the USB stick and do not damage the windows install. It will not hurt the machine but it also may not be 100% compatible with laptops. The linux images have pretty good support for the common chipset but laptop are known to use unusual part and it is tricky to install drivers in these boot images at times.

It is still something simple to try as a method to eliminate the software on the laptop as the cause. Generally if it works fine with linux you simplest option is to reinstall windows rather than trying to find what is actually causing the issue.

If the machine is easy to disassemble you might consider swapping the cards.....then again wifi cards are fairly inexpensive so if you are going to disassemble the machine just replace it and hope to get lucky.

 

[cbtitus]

This is looking more like a hardware issue but it could also be any software installed on the machine or even garbage from say a poorly uninstalled app like vpn.

Not sure how hard is would be to boot a linux USB image on the machines and compare them. These linux images run completely from the USB stick and do not damage the windows install. It will not hurt the machine but it also may not be 100% compatible with laptops. The linux images have pretty good support for the common chipset but laptop are known to use unusual part and it is tricky to install drivers in these boot images at times.

It is still something simple to try as a method to eliminate the software on the laptop as the cause.
If the machine is easy to disassemble you might consider swapping the cards.....then again wifi cards are fairly inexpensive so if you are going to disassemble the machine just replace it and hope to get luck

Thanks for replying. I'm wondering how it could be a hardware issue when a file transfer from the NAS over the WiFi gives 400MBps... does the hardware know about the protocol being used?

 

[dwd999]

Not sure what's going on here. My son and I have identical Lenovo Yoga 7i/Windows 11 laptops. My son noticed that he was getting poor download speeds, so we set up the laptops side by side on the same 5GHz network. Using fast.com on Edge, mine will get 450Mbps while his gets 60-70Mbps. I've checked drivers (reinstalled his), UEFI/Bios settings, network adapter settings, power/performance profiles -- all are the same between the 2 laptops.

I have a spare TPLink USB WiFi adapter, so I plugged that in for each laptop, and turned off the internal WiFi adapter. Both laptops got 230MBps from fast.com.

Other observations:
Same results with Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. All extensions off for Edge, same results.

The wireless network properties shows:
Link speed (Receive/Transmit) 1021/961 (Mbps)

When I set up a 1GB file on our Synology NAS and had his machine copy it to a local folder in File Manager over wifi, I got 400+ Mbps.

When connected to ethernet, fast.com on Edge gives 600Mbps

No QoS or parental controls set on router. His laptop does the same thing on other networks, so already pretty sure it's not my router.

No VPN, no proxy on his laptop.

It feels like download speed over http is capped for the internal adapter on his machine, but I don't know how or why that would be.

Any ideas or things to check?

Thanks in advance.

The improvement using the usb adapter suggests that your son's laptop may be damaged, e.g. his antenna may be damaged or there may be an internal connection problem. You many need to have service tech check this out.

 

[cbtitus]

The improvement using the usb adapter suggests that your son's laptop may be damaged, e.g. his antenna may be damaged or there may be an internal connection problem. You many need to have service tech check this out.

We got 400MBps transferring a file over WiFi from my NAS, so it doesn't seem like hardware to me. We'll probably just have to reinstall Windows at some point but it would be nice not to have to.

 

[bill001g]

Thanks for replying. I'm wondering how it could be a hardware issue when a file transfer from the NAS over the WiFi gives 400MBps... does the hardware know about the protocol being used?

That is a good point didn't notice your nas test when I first read this. Problem is now what do you do. The main difference is speedtesting sites use browsers and the filesharing does not. I guess you could test download times from steam or something similar. Steam does not use the web browser for downloads even though its menu system might.

Problem is there is such a huge pile of junk in windows all hidden with massive amounts of registry settings that even a single one could cause the issue. Maybe you could say uninstall chrome if you are using and it and reinstall but a lot of times windows is too helpful and keeps track of setting from previous installs.

I just wish microsoft start to sell a windows lite version that only has software you install. Even though linux is massively more complex because of its lack of gui it is still simpler to troubleshoot stuff like this.

This has become crazy where the solution to pretty much any windows problem is a complete reinstall. What I buy a new car everytime it won't start ?

 

[cbtitus]

That is a good point didn't notice your nas test when I first read this.

Yeah, my bad there, I just now highlighted it in my post. I'm hoping maybe someone has run into a similar situation, but I'm kind of resigned to a reinstall at some point.

 

[JohnMGotts]

This is likely an added program/app that is impacting the speed because you can get 400Mbs by a different route. If both Windows versions are identical (including updates,) I would start by backing off programs with install dates closest to when the problem started. Games would probably be a good place to start.
Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t allow you to boot to safe mode with wifi networking, but wouldn’t that be a handy tool? Additionally, although tedious, you might want to compare running/started processes between units directly after reboot for clues (in Task Manager.)

 

[Ralston18]

Try some other comparisons in line with the preceding post:

Compare the laptop's respective "ipconfig /all" files.

Boot both laptops and, without doing anything else, compare results via Task Manager, Resource Monitor, and Process Explorer.

What differences exist? Is there a reason for any differences?

Use all three tools but only one tool at a time.

[Note: Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Take a close look at any differences in performance: what resources are being used, to what extent (%), and what is using any given resource.

If there are no immediate differences then go to the next step and do identical downloads while again observing and comparing the laptop's respective performances. Especially network related.

Hopefully some notable and significant difference will be discovered.