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Internet speed slow on Windows 8

Last response: in Windows 8
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Hello everyone!

I recently installed Windows 8 Pro on my system and so far it has been a fairly positive experience. I did noticed however that my internet speed has dropped to an extreme low after the upgrade, with the download speed dropping from 17Mbps to 1.5Mbps at most and uploads took a small dip as well. I have a D-Link DWA-556 wifi card on my computer which is fairly new. I first assumed it was a driver problem and installed the latest atheros driver for the AR5008 chipset and it had the same problem as the driver Windows 8 installs itself (after uninstalling the driver in Device Manager). I also tried installing the driver I used before with Windows 7 that worked fine, but it too had the slow speeds sadly.

I decided to try tethering to my cellphone to see if maybe it was something to do with the house connection and apparently it seems to work fairly well. So now it feels like it is something to do with the router, but everyone else in the house has the same fast speeds as usual. Wifi status on windows 8 shows full bars and a full 300Mbps internet speed so health checks are fine. Again connectivity and speed was fine prior to the upgrade so I am wondering if maybe the problem is in a setting that needs to be changed on the router. I'm the only one in the house with Windows 8 as of now, everyone else is Windows 7. Has anybody ever dealt with a problem like this after the Windows 8 update and found out what may be causing this? Thanks for any support on this :)  .

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Windows 8 Expert

Personally I haven't seen this kind behavior, but the most likely culprit is your network driver. Check either the system (if you have a prebuilt box from one of the major OEM's) or the motherboard (if you built the system yourself) manufacturer's websites for newer network drivers. If they don't have any specific with Windows 8, download whatever the latest version if for Windows 7.
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hi , i got hp with win 8, i notice that the speed for download decrease to 1 M or to completely sometimes no connection. the speed upload is same 7M. there s nothing downloading info with my computer since with my cellphone or another laptop i got 15M download and 7 for upload.
i look to update driver automaticaly for wifi card, no success, i uninstall it and download driver for windows 7 (hp notebook tx, there no driver for windows 8 for mine/ windows 8 should be also just a enhanced UI for win 7, so i guess driver should be ok) still not fixing my problem. im wondering if it s not windows 8 giving this trouble.

medsam said:
hi , i got hp with win 8, i notice that the speed for download decrease to 1 M or to completely sometimes no connection. the speed upload is same 7M. there s nothing downloading info with my computer since with my cellphone or another laptop i got 15M download and 7 for upload.
i look to update driver automaticaly for wifi card, no success, i uninstall it and download driver for windows 7 (hp notebook tx, there no driver for windows 8 for mine/ windows 8 should be also just a enhanced UI for win 7, so i guess driver should be ok) still not fixing my problem. im wondering if it s not windows 8 giving this trouble.


My brand new hp laptop is doing the same thing. my phone and other computers are getting download speeds around 18mbps and the hp is getting an average of 5 mbps. The upload is around the same as the other devices. I'm about to try updating drivers, or contacting hp, because this machine is only a week old.

If anyone finds a related fix please let me know.

It is a problem with drivers; especially Broadcom. I had the same issue with my Dell, thought it was Windows 8 but plugged in a different wifi card, and voila. Same thing on my wife's HP.

Look on the manuf website for Windows 8 drivers, if it doesnt help report the problem to the manufacturer. It will help increase the rate in which they resolve the issue.

Hi, I found windows 8 apps were taking forever to download and install. I decided to cancel all apps and app updates. While cancelling them, all of a sudden, the remaining apps started giving me error messages stating they had not been installed due to some error and had an option to view details of that error on each app. I clicked to view the error and it gave me the option to retry installing the app. When I clicked to retry, the app downloaded and installed almost instantly.

Try cancelling all apps and update apps that are pending see if it works for your system. If you want to install the app updates try installing them one by one. I found it worked for me.

joyjordan said:
My brand new hp laptop is doing the same thing. my phone and other computers are getting download speeds around 18mbps and the hp is getting an average of 5 mbps. The upload is around the same as the other devices. I'm about to try updating drivers, or contacting hp, because this machine is only a week old.

If anyone finds a related fix please let me know.


try cancelling app updates. I tried installing apps they were taking so long I started cancelling them 1 by 1 including updates pending. All of a sudden apps started installing almost instantly.

try and see.

Thanks to the steps from the GoodGoodMan...

However, depending on your system you may need to change step 6 & 7

1. Open Network Sharing Center
2. Click Change Adapter Settings
3 Right click on WiFi and choose properties
4 Click Configure
5 Choose Advanced
6 On "Roaming Sensitivity" change the value to Disable
7 On the "Power Management" tab, deselect "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

NOTE: I am running Windows 8 on a desktop so this may affect laptop services.

So I tried the suggested fix of switching off 'allow the computer to turn off this device' on a HP Pavilion G6 2204-sa. It then told me I had no wireless drivers installed for device and the power management tab disappeared. :o 

I went into device manager, uninstalled the device by right clicking it and uninstalling. Rebooted windows and the device reinstalled. Since then my speeds seem to have improved hugely and with more stability.

popes2 said:
Hello everyone!

I recently installed Windows 8 Pro on my system and so far it has been a fairly positive experience. I did noticed however that my internet speed has dropped to an extreme low after the upgrade, with the download speed dropping from 17Mbps to 1.5Mbps at most and uploads took a small dip as well. I have a D-Link DWA-556 wifi card on my computer which is fairly new. I first assumed it was a driver problem and installed the latest atheros driver for the AR5008 chipset and it had the same problem as the driver Windows 8 installs itself (after uninstalling the driver in Device Manager). I also tried installing the driver I used before with Windows 7 that worked fine, but it too had the slow speeds sadly.

I decided to try tethering to my cellphone to see if maybe it was something to do with the house connection and apparently it seems to work fairly well. So now it feels like it is something to do with the router, but everyone else in the house has the same fast speeds as usual. Wifi status on windows 8 shows full bars and a full 300Mbps internet speed so health checks are fine. Again connectivity and speed was fine prior to the upgrade so I am wondering if maybe the problem is in a setting that needs to be changed on the router. I'm the only one in the house with Windows 8 as of now, everyone else is Windows 7. Has anybody ever dealt with a problem like this after the Windows 8 update and found out what may be causing this? Thanks for any support on this :)  .


Windows 8 has this wierd lock thing going on to limit the bandwidth when you try to download anything.
This guy made a video(ME) about how to solve the problem. Remember to show support if it worked thx...

popes2 said:
Hello everyone!

I recently installed Windows 8 Pro on my system and so far it has been a fairly positive experience. I did noticed however that my internet speed has dropped to an extreme low after the upgrade, with the download speed dropping from 17Mbps to 1.5Mbps at most and uploads took a small dip as well. I have a D-Link DWA-556 wifi card on my computer which is fairly new. I first assumed it was a driver problem and installed the latest atheros driver for the AR5008 chipset and it had the same problem as the driver Windows 8 installs itself (after uninstalling the driver in Device Manager). I also tried installing the driver I used before with Windows 7 that worked fine, but it too had the slow speeds sadly.

I decided to try tethering to my cellphone to see if maybe it was something to do with the house connection and apparently it seems to work fairly well. So now it feels like it is something to do with the router, but everyone else in the house has the same fast speeds as usual. Wifi status on windows 8 shows full bars and a full 300Mbps internet speed so health checks are fine. Again connectivity and speed was fine prior to the upgrade so I am wondering if maybe the problem is in a setting that needs to be changed on the router. I'm the only one in the house with Windows 8 as of now, everyone else is Windows 7. Has anybody ever dealt with a problem like this after the Windows 8 update and found out what may be causing this? Thanks for any support on this :)  .


Windows 8 has this wierd lock thing going on to limit the bandwidth when you try to download anything.
This guy made a video(ME) about how to solve the problem. Remember to show support if it worked thx...

http://youtu.be/e_PupUeFw7c

My bad... No link in previous answer...

I had the same issue, I was getting good response times up until about a week ago and it started being responsive in 'waves' sometimes great, other times it was like I was on a 56K modem.
I use windows 8 on a new HP desktop and have a LAN cable connected to the modem/router I use.
I did a few things on my PC and nothing seemed to resolve this issue.
I updated the drivers (never mind that the PC is new and the drivers were working fine before last week), rebooted, same internet 'come and go' connectivity.
Power cycled my home network, and all devices, same thing. Same issue
Ran MS and HP updates, same issue.
Tried to disable my 3rd party AV and FW (Comodo and Antivir) and use the Win8 apps, same issue.
I then remembered that I had a DSL issue with my ISP about a week before, where connectivity was lost for some time.

So the other thing I did do, after I did the power cycle of my home network, is go into the command prompt and run a ipconfig /flushdns. and rebooted.
My issue seems to be resolved, my internet connectivity is fast and responsive again.
Not sure if this will work for everyone or if everyone should try it (or why I had to do this with Win8 when I never had to do it with WinXP) but it seems to have done the job for me.
Not sure if this is really what resolved it, but I would say it is something that takes about 5 seconds to do and I do not believe should mess with your PC settings.
  • PCguy1138 has edited this thread

The first thing to do is check to see how much bandwidth your computer is using. The easiest way is using Task Manager. From Task Manager you can open Resource Monitor to dig in a little deeper. From the resource tab you can see what processes are using bandwidth and what percent of the network each is using. On the performance tab you can see how much is being used in each area of your computer, CPU, Memory, Harddisk, Ethernet, Wi-Fi etc. Windows 8 uses your internet connection to update your computer with Windows Update, your live tiles use the internet to update themselves. If you recently configured Mail then the computer may be busy downloading your mail.

Also, make sure your drivers are up to date and that you have done the other troubleshooting steps listed.
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