Virtual Machine's internet is faster than the Host

[physx7]

Hello everybody,

I have Vista as my Host OS and I am running a copy of XP Pro SP3 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. The internet in the XP Virtual machine is noticeably faster than the internet in the host. Any ideas why? And please don't give me the "Vista sucks" line.

Thanks

 

[pat mcgroin]

Possibly due to add ons that are running in the background.
Also possibly the DNS cache on Vista needing to be flushed.

With your Xp being what I am assuming to be a fairly fresh install since it is virtual,
I would guess that it hasnt had time to be loaded down with all of the things
that WExplorer seems to attract.
Vista is supposed to be better optimized than XP in networking and TCP/IP but I havent run any tests on the comparison.

I would think though that a reset of your Vista WExplorer and a good cleaning that the numbers would get much closer than you are seeing.

The main reason that I assume this is due to the fact that this computer has XP and Vista on it and Vista is (was) much faster than XP, mainly I think because the XP install was going on 2 years when I put Vista on.

I did find a post on this forum speaking of Vista being slow to load pages from time to time and had the same problem.
The post went on to say to turn off "DNS CLIENT" in windows services.
I did that and it seems to have solved that problem..
I no longer cache DNS info locally and rely on my ISP and dont notice any difference otherwise.
One other benefit of this is no more DNS redirect concens that have happened in the past.

Any other info you can provide as to any special setup parameter that you may have such as if Vista is on (or monitoring) a network could be the difference.

 

[physx7]

Ok thanks!

I run Firefox in both the host and client. <rant>I HATE IE!</rant> How would I clear out the DNS cache? I always run disk cleanup and delete all my history and I even run an index.dat cleaner when I'm through. I'm just paranoid ; )

Actually, I don't browse the web that much except to post here...

And yes the XP install is only a few weeks old.

I use the virtual machine to browse the internet with, and to download stuff (see if it is safe).

 

[pat mcgroin]

The virtual machine should be much safer for a couple of reasons.
1. It needs to be recreated when rebooted so much if not most stored info goes with it.
2. Being in virtual should keep contact between the 2 op sytems totally seperated as the vitual will use its own function calls and drivers.
Have you tried to strip it down to minimums and game with it? I be interested to see how that would work out.

I did read the other day that MS virtual engine has a update concerning a possible bug that would allow the 2 to see each other and run code.
After a quick search I cant find the article so check the MS updates.
I will look for the article some more and post my results later.

As for flushing the DNS
From a command prompt
ipconfig /flushdns <enter>

Another good tool to try to see the differences is tcpview.
It is one of the MS sysinternal tools.
I use that and process explorer (a better task manager) often when trying to figure stuff out as they are much more informative than their counterparts.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx