So I kept on having performance issues with MCE 2005 and my Xbox 360 with a gigbit ethernet wired home. Crazy, crazy, stuff. It worked fine for a little bit after my last fix and has recently gone bad again without any new software installed. I decided to take the plunge and install Vista on my server. Wow, Media Center looks really nice Microsoft, good job! However, the network performance was still sub par. Completely dejected now, I went to Fry's to get a network cable tester to make sure all my wiring was alright. Turns out everything was fine with my cables in use so I went searching the web again for any clues when I stumbled upon a couple of links:
From the second link, I tried method two and wham, the network performance tuner was pegged out and had all the bandwidth it needed for HDTV and beyond.
Whew! Case closed, Rx Pause in the Gigabit ethernet driver flow control settings. I'll have to remember that one.
UPDATE (4/24): It's back and I don't know why!!! This sucks.
UPDATE 2 (4/24, part 2): Troubleshooting some more... So don't do both, even though I had only set the flow control to RX Paused, having the 100Mbps Full duplex setting with RX Paused might've been slowing it down too much. Turning the Speed & Duplex setting on my DLink DES-1024D switch back to Auto seems to have fixed it (at least for now).
UPDATE 3 (4/30): Problems came back again, and this time, I know why it keeps coming back. Evidently, the network adapter driver on Vista for Broadcom's NetXtreme 57xx series doesn't retain its advanced settings on reboot. Even though the settings show Rx Pause after a reboot, its really not set, it must just be a UI setting it's remembering. Everytime I reboot I have to change from Rx Pause to AUTO and back to Rx Pause for it to work. So the original problem wasn't XP, it was the gigabit issue and the recurrance of the issue is caused by a faulty Vista driver. I'll have to see what type of support I can get from Broadcom on this...
Exactly the same problem here. Let me know what you find out from Broadcom.
Will do. It's been a while without a response though. They wanted me to reboot and get them some screenshots of my registry to see what was changing. I suggested that maybe upon reboot their driver wasn't setting all the values from the registry properly. Haven't heard back.
So far, Broadcom hasn't been very helpful. My first support ticket came to a dead end and my second to reopen the first did as well. I'm going to open a new ticket and not reference either of them. All having this same problem should file a ticket at http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/supportrequest.php
Thanks for your post man, i had the same issue on a netgear gigabit switch, used method 2 on the article (enable flow control) and BAM full blast now on wired (switched for troubleshooting purposes), switched to wireless and still getting full bars - no more network errors yay :D
Your welcome, I thought others would benefit from my grief. I'm still trying to resolve the Broadcom issue. They've finally confirmed that there is an issue with their driver and gigabit switches with auto-flow control. I'm now awaiting a new driver so I don't have to mess with the reboots. I wonder if the root of this problem, having to use flow control in the first place, is truly a networking/switch issue or a Microsoft bug in their packet sizes they use for streaming??? Anyone from Microsoft listening?
Broadcom basically said that they'd look into it, but I felt like they were blaming it on my switch. Strange how the problem only came back after my computer was rebooted, not the switch. I know the problem would be fixed if I could enable flow control on the switch, but I'd expect changing the setting in my driver would stay set after a reboot...
Oh well, I'll just have to teach my wife how to make the change when I'm not here if she wants to stream to our living room.
Hi Shawn,
Where were you able to find the settings for your NIC to find out that they weren't set properly? Was it in the registry? Also, what type of switch are you using. I am experiencing problems as well and wanted to see if it's the same as yours.
-Grant
Settings are in the registry correctly, but they don't appear to be getting applied to the device properly. I'm using a DLink DES-1024D switch that doesn't allow any configuration changes to duplex settings, everything is automatic.
I even went back to XP and the problem still exists with that driver.
It's such a pain to have to resort to making the setting changes on every reboot.
I am experiencing the same thing on a system I support for a home theatre company I do constulting with. His PC is an HP that I used the "factory" upgrade CD and have no end of issues.
The Dell at home that I built from the Vista DVD myself has never had any issues. The former was the first time I did the OEM install upgrade process in years. Mistake. I will see if there is a scripted solution to this issue that could be put in the startup folder.
Hi, for what it is worth, it does not seem to matter whether you change the flow to Auto or Rx pause so long as you change it to something else and then back again (a pain when you are working remotely!). Has a new driver been released yet?
Steve: I haven't seen your behavior, but I've also removed Vista a while back. With XP now I don't have a problem... I don't know if they've released a new driver. Please post back if you find out.
I came across this discussion literally moments before placing an order for a Netgear gigabit switch for my MCE2005 + 360 wired network. I went to Broadcom's site, and downloaded/installed the latest 10.62b driver for my 57xx controller (5751 in a Dell 8600 desktop). The driver shows a late October 2007 publication date and a mid-September date in the driver signature. I obviously have no way of verifying if this 'fixes' the issue since my current switch is 100Mb. Can anyone with MCE2005 + GigE + 360 + Broadcom 10.62b driver confirm that the issue is fixed? Thanks!