LAN transfers killing my computer

When I try to transfer large files from on computer to another directly (NIC to NIC), one of my computers has high CPU usage at about 30%, and really high memory usage to the point where the mouse become unresponsive and I can either wait for the transfer to finish or reset my computer. Waiting isn't really an option though because the transfer slows way down when the memory is maxed out.

Anyway, I've tried having Remote Differential Compression on and off, no firewall on either side, no virus protection on either side...

When I start the transfer, my used memory is at about 1GB. Over about 20 seconds, it will linearly ramp up until it maxes out and the computer stops responding. Once the transfer completes or I stop it, memory instantly drops back to the pre-transfer levels. I've tried checking Task Manager, but none of my processes show more than 100MB of used memory.

Does the same situation occur if you throw a switch or a router between the two PCs?

I had this issue recently with my old 2k3 server and any Windows system. Open the configuration for the network device and DISABLE anything that has the word "offload" in it. Examples:

IPv4 Checksum Offload
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6)

There may be others or more of them, just disable them. I saw a MASSIVE increase in network throughput and substantially lower CPU usage (30-50% down to 1-5%). See if that fixes your problem.

Mooyo said:

Does the same situation occur if you throw a switch or a router between the two PCs?

Click to expand...

No. When going through my wireless router this does not happen. I suspect because of the drastically lower speeds

thideras said:

I had this issue recently with my old 2k3 server and any Windows system. Open the configuration for the network device and DISABLE anything that has the word "offload" in it. Examples:

IPv4 Checksum Offload
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6)

There may be others or more of them, just disable them. I saw a MASSIVE increase in network throughput and substantially lower CPU usage (30-50% down to 1-5%). See if that fixes your problem.

Click to expand...

Gave this a shot, and it didn't help Probably because...

I just tried transferring my music collection from my OS hard drive to my storage drive and I got the same high CPU utilization and maxed out RAM.

I'm reinstalling windows here in about 10 minutes going from build 7100 to Server 2008 R2, so I'll see if that fixes the problem. Otherwise could having compression enabled on my storage drive do this?

If it is doing it internally, that has nothing to do with your network card.

Either you have a program interfering (scanning, etc) all data movement or the data is being compress/uncompressed on the fly.

I'm now doing a LAN transfer to my new OS installation and the problem seems to have disappeared.

I've never run any security software and windows firewall was all the way down, so I have no idea.

I'll chalk this one up to weirdness.