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Vista Wireless Lag for Gamers & Others
Greetings all. I recently ran across a problem, evidently a common one, that some users encounter with vista if they are using a wireless network. The problem is that every 30 to 60 seconds gamers will experience lag spikes. This is most evident in online games, especially FPS and MMORPGs.
What's happening:
In Windows XP wireless networking was handled by two services:
- WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network)
and - WZC (Wireless Zero Configuration)
The WLAN Service managed the Wireless Lan settings as well as basic connectivity while the WZC service handled finding networks in your area. In XP some users would experience these same spikes if they used the native Windows Wireless Zero Configuration but it was easy enough to turn off the WZC service (or just not use it and manually configure your wireless network) so it was never a huge problem.
Enter Windows VISTA (any edition):
In Windows VISTA the two services are combined into 1:
WLAN Autoconfig
This service now does both the tasks of the old service. The problem is that no matter what native VISTA settings you use, even turning off the "Connect to a better network if available" option, the "polling" for new/better networks continues even after you've connected. The problem is that now that these two services are tied together this polling, which takes about 1/2 to 1 second totally freezes your network connection. For SOME wireless users this can cause their router to dump them off the network, for others it merely causes a brief spike in network lag.
To detect the issue simply establish your wireless connection, open a command prompt and ping your default gateway.
START -> Type CMD in the path and hit Enter
In the Command prompt type IPCONFIG and it will show you your default gateway address.
Type PING -t
ie:
ping 10.10.10.1 -t (use your default gateway, not the 10.10.10.1 example I give)
A series of ping results will scroll on your screen. After about 30-60 seconds you'll see one that takes FAR longer than the others (usually between 700 and 2500 ms) while the others are all <10ms in response time. This is the lag spike because your WLAN Autoconfig service is 'pausing' while it polls for new networks.
Ok Eln... how the heck do we fix this???
Easy enough (or rather, it's easy once you know how):
1) Go on the web and find out if your NIC has XP drivers available (if you are using 64bit vista try to get 64bit XP drivers).
2) Download the XP drivers to your hard drive.
3) Delete your VISTA drivers for the NIC from any folders they are in on the system. If you installed from a CD they were likely copied to a folder on your hard drive (Linksys, for example, places them in C:\Linksys)
4) Uninstall your current NIC and Drivers by using Device Manager (if you do not know how get help. I'm not going to try to walk you through it here)
5) Disconnect your NIC
6) Reboot the system
7) Go to the XP drivers you downloaded and install them
8) Connect your NIC
Congratulations you now have XP drivers loaded and should be back on the internet at this point. MOST wireless cards will work fine with the XP drivers. I've had luck with Netgear, Belkin and Linksys XP drivers on this. No guarantee that ALL cards will do this allright but I haven't heard of any that don't...
Now if you ping your gateway you'll see that the problem is still there. Yeah annoying, I know. We're not finished yet...
Next step:
Go to this website:
This application is part of the solution. Download it.
Next go to your Network and Sharing center:
- START -> Right Click on NETWORK -> Properties
- Click on "Manage Wireless Networks" on the left.
- You should see your network listed. Right click on it and select "properties"
- Un-Check "Connect to a more preferred network if available"
- Click "ok"
Now close any extra windows you have open and install WLAN Optimizer
Launch it and it should automatically come up as 'optimized'
Now ping your gateway again (see above)
The lag spikes should now be gone.
Hope others find this helpful. Sometimes just loading wlan optimizer or another program called "Vista Anti Lag" fixes the issue or you can use some command lines to try to fix it as well. Usually, however, if you're using dedicated VISTA drivers these won't work.
Good luck and happy surfing!
Message Edited by Elnator on 01-08-2008 06:55 PM
- Eskymi,Sounds like you may be unaffected, very glad to hear it :) Does dell use a custom wireless configuration utility? Because if they do then that is why. This issue only occurs if you use the built in *windows* wireless networking. If you use a custom wireless configuration application it bypasses the stack and uses it's own, thus preventing the issue. Linksys, Netgear and Belkin do not yet provide one for Vista.If you're not using a custom wireless config utility then that's great :) This somehow didn't affect your system.
Message Edited by Elnator on 01-08-2008 06:42 PM packerFan07
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Posted January 8th, 2008 23:00
I didn't see those huge spikes eitther.One thing I would like to mention is that I had quite a few between 10-20 ms, until I moved my antennae slightly.Moral of the story, Don't be afraid to rotate you antennae around a bit and use ping to help you find the best orientation - who would have thunk tilting away from the router woul be the best.....thanks for the tip though..- Knowing Dell I think that everything they use is custom, so that might be why.
Also, would a laptop and desktop react differently in your scenario.
I ask, because I did this on my laptop, but not my son's desktop. I think when I get home from work today I'll try it and see if his spikes. I rarely use his computer for gaming and maybe he does have this problem, but he has never said anything, never noticed, or just ignores it.
Packerfan07,
As silly as this sounds, my folks could not connect through their wireless so I started adjusting the antenna. It finally connected when I put the antenna at a 90 degree angle from the wireless card.
So you never know what angle it will connect at.
Message Edited by eskymi on 01-09-2008 10:30 AM - Could be the dell custom stuff isn't affected. They've got good engineers and probably picked up on the problem and resolved it for custom pc's a while ago. I thought I'd be ok re-using my existing wireless gear so penny pinched and didn't get dell's gear. Since I did that I ran smack into the windows issue.Who knows. All I know is it's not just me, many people have posted in dozens of forums around the web (google for VISTA WIRELESS LAG and you'll get tons of hits as well as various fixes which are all variations of the one I did, some work, some don't).As far as desktop vs. laptop? I honestly don't know. Both my laptops and my desktop had the issue but neither laptop is a dell and the desktop, while a dell, has an after-market Wireless NIC.
- This is alot of hogwash.....My kid uses a linksys wireless card, games all the time, and has no lag at all. Maybe our vista is different....lolOh, and we don't have any dell wireless gear, and retail version of Vista
Message Edited by gdwrnch3 on 01-09-2008 09:59 PM - It's not hogwashSee link:Many many people have run into this. Just because you haven't doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you haven't that's awesome. I posted this so that those who DO run into it have instructions on how to fix it. Some folks never get affected by it. Others can just run Vista Anti Lag or WLAN Optimizer without any other intervention and yet others have to load XP drivers AND run WLAN or Vista Anti Lag to fix it.Frankly I'm sorry I posted it at all at this point. Won't be replying to the thread anymore. Turning off my subscription to the thread.
Message Edited by Elnator on 01-10-2008 03:32 PM Cloaksheed
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Posted June 4th, 2008 11:00
I have been having this problem with my wireless internet. After long hours and no solution i've decided i'd just buy a normal ethernet cable.
If i go wired, i can then turn off WLAN autoconfig and still be connected to the internet yes?
eskymi
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Posted January 8th, 2008 17:00
YOu have some nice tips there, but I do have a few comments.
You state it's noticable to online gamers. I have three wireless vista computers and do not see these spikes you speak of. The games play smoothly, unless I just don't notice anything.
Then this contradicts other posts and threads in the sense that someone posted that the reason the wireless cards don't work right is because Dell uses Broadcom cards that are actually ASUS cards and they use WINDOWS XP drivers rather than VISTA and to download VISTA drivers to make the cards work, blah blah....
So as helpful as these forums are, I do sometimes question why there are so many things that contradict each other.
I am lucky as I did a test...I ran the ping test for several minutes to see what happens and these are my results....
1ms or less = 266, 2ms = 7, 3ms = 3 and 5ms or higher 2, both being 5....
And the test was done from my laptop which is the furthest computer from the router, while my daughter and son were both surfing the net or playing games. Not sure if those factors have an affect, but just thought I'd throw that out there.
Message Edited by eskymi on 01-08-2008 02:34 PM