Slow network

[chess9]

An engineer friend of mine called me yesterday with a slow network connection problem. It seems his two clients frequently come to an almost standstill, while his server is working just fine. He's sharing a cable connection in Win2000. I had him reformat his two client's hard drives because it's been over a year since he did it anyway and he tries every piece of software that comes out. No luck. I had him check to make sure the cabling wasn't passing near any HVAC or generators or other electrical interference. Nope. 10-15 feet of cable from his garage to his house.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[obenton]

What OS in the clients, what protocols, are they slow when they access each other? Network and/or internet slow?

 

[chess9]

Obenton: All machines are running Windows 2000. I believe he is only running tcp/ip and ics. The slowness occurs when the clients try to access the internet. He was complaining about the internet, not his ability to transfer files between machines.
I also suggested he get the Windows 2000 updates because they updated the tcp/ip stack, I think, and ics, didn't they?
Thanks for any help.