GAMING SINCE PONG

Since I've loaded Vista Ultimate 64-bit, I get this weird network slow down/lock issue.

Normally, I come in to the pub at a ping rate around 45. Every once in a while, I'll suddenly climb up slowly to a rate of 999 and then get connection interruption issues. If I get out of the game and come back in, it is still the same 999 ping. It takes me to reboot the machine to get back to the rates. I can go for days without it occurring. I test my connection speeds, and they are fine. Web pages load normally, email works, etc. It just seems that the ping rate on COD goes nuts.

Every once in a while though, the entire network will drop and not come back. At that point, I can't get email, web, anything. My other computers work fine, so I'm ruling out a router/modem issue.

This only started happening on this machine since I went to Vista. XP Pro never had an issue.

Right now, as I write this, my ping rate is 999.

Two things come to mind.

1) Make sure your Network Card driver is Vista 64 bit compatible. They may have an updated driver for your Network Card.

2) Not sure if they moved this menu in Vista, but right click My Computer, select Manage, and then click on Device Manager. Right click on your Network Card and click Properties. Power Management tab. Uncheck Allow the compute to turn off this device to save power. Windows XP had issues with that setting and Vista may have the same problem.

Hmm...I noticed that it was checked to allow the computer to turn off the power to the adapter to save power. I also got a tip to turn off all of the check features that Vista has added for the TCP/IP packets. I've got all that set now, so I'll cross my fingers and see what happens. Thanks for the suggestion!

I have Vista 64-bit Ultimate too and I had network issues in the beginning. All I had to do was download the updates at my motherboard's support section and it worked, no issues after that. Of course, you might have a manufacturer that doesn't give a crap about their customers, Creative Labs come to mind, but luckily, I've got EVGA and they haven't let me down yet.

Jason