Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's

I am running three PC's on my home network. I am using a Linksys cable modem router. It works very well. My problem has to do with browsing files and moving them from one machine to the other. This actually only happens between my desktop and my laptop. My kid's machine is not part of the problem.
What happens is that my desktop can see the shared drive on my laptop and can open and browse it's files nearly as fast it's own. File transfer is nearly transparent over the network.
The problem lies with the laptop. While it can browse the Internet at blazing speed, it is agonizingly slow when browsing my desktop's drives. When I double-click the icon for the desktop in Network Neighborhood, it takes at least a minute for the shared resources to show up. When I click on the drive I want to browse, it takes another minute or more to open. Same with the folders and files. Not very practical.
The desktop is an Athlon 650 running 128MB of RAM. The Ethernet adapter is integrated onto the Mobo.
The laptop is an IBM 560E ThinkPad 166 Mghz MMX with 48MB of RAM. I am using a 3Com 10BaseT Ethernet card.
The only protocol running is TCP/IP.
The confusing part is that the ThinkPad has no problem downloading mp3s or playing streaming video over the Internet.
Any suggestions will be appreciated. If you have the time, email response is even more appreciated. chris@chriswhitworth.com

1. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
lbyard Oct-03-00 11:02 AM
In response to message 0

Try mapping the drive. Larry

2. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
christert Oct-04-00 01:12 PM
In response to message 1

Larry, thanks for the suggestion. I forgot to mention that I am running Win 98SE on both computers.
I was looking at a Dummies guide on Networking trying to find some pointers on how to map a network drive. In the text, he says that if the process seems too confusing, install 98 so that you have Network Neighborhood and can forget all about having to map network drives.
Any sage advice?

3. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
lbyard Oct-04-00 02:02 PM
In response to message 2

I would suggest placing that book in the nearest trash can and reading http://duxcw.com/digest/Howto/network/net2pc/map.htm. Mapping the drive, whether you use the drive letter to access the drive or not, may fix the problem. Larry

4. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
christert Oct-05-00 04:15 AM
In response to message 3

I admire your candor. I will give it a shot.

5. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
technut Oct-05-00 04:00 PM
In response to message 4

I would like to mention that you may have this trouble due to unnessecary protocols installed
you should make sure you are using only tcp/ip,
I highly reccomend aginst any mapped drive or nonpassword protected share theese will leave you open to attacks from any scriptkitty with a scanner and anyone on the net can map your drives.
Also any share even password protected leaves you open for hackers with your 24/7 fast connection this is the first thing a hacker looks for. I would map the laptop drive to the pc with the modem and give youself a password protected write access share from the main and dissable when you are not using it.

7. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
christert Oct-05-00 11:08 PM
In response to message 5

Thanks to both of you for your advice. I did map the drives on my desktop to my laptop, and the transfer speed issue disappeared. I am still confused as to why this step in necessary. Browsing the laptop from the desktop is nearly transparent. No noticable lag whatsoever. This is without mapping. What is it about mapping that solves this issue?
Also, to technut:
prior to my installing my Linksys cable modem router, I ran Black Ice defender and would routinely get probed both innocently and not so innocently. Sending a backtrace to the probers usually deterred them. Since the router went in, I have not had any issues at all with this. As a matter of fact, Black Ice is pretty useless these days. Am I kidding myself, or is hiding behind my router with private addressing going on behind it a sufficient deterrent?

8. RE: Unequal transfer speeds between two PC's
technut Oct-05-00 11:47 PM
In response to message 7

the router is usually a sufficient deterrant aginst the average attack. You really have no need to continue running blackice. I was unaware that you had the router. I still reccomend putting passwords on your shares however because it is just good practice. The mapping helps because it takes care of negotiating the path ahead of time and you can let it connect at logon instead of browsing to it in explorer. (It is similar to having a web page in cache the os remembers the path.)