Wireless lags can be problematic in various situations. This includes during multimedia streams, live feeds but also gaming. This wireless problem can range from stutters to serious connection problems and even drops. This is causes by a service in Windows XP and Windows Vista that is regularly looking for new wireless networks. The service is called Wireless Zero Configuration in Windows XP and WLAN Auto Config in Windows Vista. The easiest way to check if the problem exists on a computer system is to ping a service for some time to see if there are any wireless lags.
To do that open a Windows command prompt with the shortcut [Windows R] [cmd] [enter] and type in the command ping -t www.google.com. This will ping Google and display the time it takes. If you see spikes like in the screenshot below you are experiencing wireless lags.
The easiest way to fix wireless lags is by downloading and running Wireless Zero Shutdown when running Windows XP or Vista Anti Lag when running Windows Vista.
Running either of the software programs will stop the Windows service from scanning for new wireless networks regularly as soon as a wireless connection has been established.
Related posts:
- Wireless Network Scanner inSSIDer
- Backup Wireless Networks
- Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless
- Wireless Migrator
- Essential Wireless Hacking Tools
- Create Wireless Hotspots
- Easy Debian Wireless Connections with Wifi-Wiz
- Windows Vista SP2 Details
Is this meant to be while browsing or while idle?
Jeketem you fire up the ping and can continue working normally as long as you are not capping out your bandwidth or doing other excessive tasks with the computer that might influence the results.
No lags in my case.
Not that I use wireless much. At home I don’t really see my notebook (had to log in into remote console to ping google, easier than trying to get notebook physically, lol) and when I take it elsewhere there is usually no wireless to use. :)
Don’t know about this problem with Vista Wlan Auto Config, once wireless connection is established I have no further problems, though that’s probably in my case only and some folks might experience some problems with lags. Anyway thanks for the useful info.
Thanks for the find, this really helped my connection out. i had a lot of problems with lag loading pages and streaming videos. now i have no lag and pages load right away!
Out of 119 packets sent I received 115 and lost 4, I don’t get any spikes like the ones in your screenshot but I get the “Request timed out” instead.
Does that mean I need to run the anti-lag program?
Thanks.
Hey Martin, Nice post,
Even with Anti-lag on Windows 7, i do get lag, not sure why, and to keep anti-lag always “ON” is odd, if we could have background service?
Thanks
Ameet
I think this article is a little misleading. There are many MANY things that could lead to latency in a ping weather it be wireless or wired. Especially if it’s pinging a WAN target. It might be wise to note in this article that other running services, applications, hardware devices as well as available internet/network resources can and will affect latency.
In my experience there is no “easiest way” to fix this problem as it is usually specific to the environment in which it exists. Implying such is a bit disingenuous and naive.
fatal error shows when i try to run the program
why fatal error shows when i start to run run the program?
nice info, i probe it in my house at nigth