Windows internet slow, Linux internet fast

[QuimbyDogg2]

I've been attending college now for a semester and a few days ago I decided to mess around with linux. I noticed something right away after the install, my internet was faster by a lot with linux. I find the internet to be very slow when I am using windows. I have tried using IE, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla. It can sometimes take 2 to 3 minutes for our email server webpage to load. Whenever I am in linux the pages load instantly. I actually tried to post this in windows and it was faster for me to reboot into linux and go back to this webpage than to wait for it to finish loading. This is starting to make me believe that there is a problem in windows with my machine and not our network which i thought it was originally. A lot of my friends computers that I have used to see are able to load pages faster in windows than I am. I thought maybe spyware could account for some of it, but I run Ad-Aware and im not really sure what else could cause my windows internet to be so slow all of the time. Does anyone have any ideas as to why my internet is so much slower in windows? I tried starting up windows with everything in the boot checklist disabled but it had no effect. Any help is greatly appreciated and sorry about any incoherient sentences, I am pretty tired Thanks.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

You may have to set your MTU size for Windows. Some details about how you're connected to the Internet would be a big help.

 

[QuimbyDogg2]

I dont really know too many details about the network here at this school at all. What type of details would you need and how could i go about finding them?

 

[n0cmonkey]

10 or 100mbit network? NIC? Windows version? All updated? Running anti-virus? It updated?

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I'd pick up something like DrTCP and try changing the MTU size. First I'd try 1492, reboot and see if that helps. If not, reduce it by 20 bytes or so and try again until you see a change.

 

[Thor86]

You and your Windows buddies are running the same hardware/os?

 

[QuimbyDogg2]

my nic is a netgear fa311

I am running windows XP fully updated with updated AV software I had nortan running mcaffee now because the school made us all put that on.

I didnt have any trouble with a slow network connection when I was at home on my cable network before I came here, I will look into playing with drtcp when I get a chance (after my next class). Thanks for the replys -- any other ideas if playing with MTU doesnt work?