Weird, weird problem.

Fenster

Last night, I plugged a laptop into my PC through a network cable, as I usually do.

Now, as sometimes happens, my PC became a big laggy for a minute or so as everything was connected up. However, when I restarted my PC, Windows was running incredibly slow, once it started the network-talking fifteen minutes to load everything that usually takes 20 seconds at most. And even after its slow and prone to crash if I click on anything. I booted to Fedora perfectly, so its a local problem. Both the laptop and the desktop are running Windows XP, SP2. Both machines are clean as far as malware and virii go-I swept them yesterday afternoon.

As I've connected them several times before without incident, I can only figure its some sort of bug in Windows. I can boot to safe mode, without networking, and Windows runs fine there, but once I boot with networking, it goes to crap.

So, I'm stumped. I turn it over to the masses here.

ColmOT [MSFT]

hehe - it's very unlikely to be a bug in windows (IE et al may have their problems, but networking is generally very bug free).

What IP range does your network use?
What IP address did your machien have?
Do you have a DHCP Server configured?
What virus scanner do you use (it may be scanning heavily packets coming & going out to the network)
Could you ping another machine on your network?
What configuration did your Windows Firewall have?
Do you have >1 firewall installed?
Are there events logged in Event Viewer relating to the issue?

Fenster

I sat down and had a proper look after work. Windows installed some TCP/IP protocol that conflicted badly with the one that it already used on my LAN connection, which in turn ground my PC to a halt.