A nice little tweak for Windows XP Pro & Windows Vista.

Windows reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes (mainly for Automatic Updates)
Here’s how to get it back:

Click Start–>Run–>type “gpedit.msc”

This opens the group policy editor.

Then go to: Local Computer Policy
–>Computer Configuration
–>Administrative Templates
–>Network
–>QOS Packet Scheduler
–>Limit Reservable Bandwidth

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but go to ‘Explain’ tab and you will know the truth:
”By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default.”

So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to Zero.

This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.

THIS HACK DOES NOT WORK FOR WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION!!

Windows reserves 20% of bandwidth for itself & you’ll get to use only 80% of that connection. I don’t know for what ridiculous reason why Microsoft have decided to include this into XP & Vista, but this superbug is one reason why you can’t use your broadband connection fully.

If you have a 128kbps connection, you’ll get a maximum download speed of 12.8 kB/s (80% of 16 kB/s).
I don’t know if this works or not but there’s no harm in trying it out.

& the most disappointing thing is that you can’t change it in Windows XP Home, which I use…

:-(

The Group Policy Editor is only available on Windows XP Pro & Windows Vista Ultimate.

For Home users, let me make this clear that you can’t change that setting at all. Even if you want to install the GP Editor manually, it doesn’t recognise your registry well & it will end up corrupting your boot files.

There’s a hack available that supposedly changes your installed XP Home to Pro, but unfortunately this doesn’t work as well. The original Home CD has been stripped down of all Pro features, & if you still want to try the hack, it will change your Windows to XP HomePro. You won’t get Group Policy Editor with it.

If you want to install a new version of XP Pro, let me remind you that your original XP Home Key won’t work with the Pro version. Your computer will not be genuine.
The only solution is that you switch to Ubuntu or Vista Ultimate… or Windows XP Pro.

You may also want to remove the QoS Sheduler on your connection… (I don’t know if this works)
Go to Control Panel -> Network Connections
-> Right-click on your Dial-up or ADSL connection -> Properties
-> Networking
-> Uninstall QoS Packet Scheduler