Experiencing Slow Loading of Websites Such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube on Windows 11? Here’s How to Solve It.

Even though Windows 11 will be released on the 5th of October 2021, we can already upgrade our Windows 10 machines with the same build Microsoft is releasing to the public. Of course, being an IT professional, I always want to try new goodies as soon as possible. So I upgraded my Dell G5 laptop with the latest Microsoft operating system, hoping that it would not be a new Vista.

The Problem: Slow loading of Websites Such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram on both LAN and WiFi

My fears soon proved justified. Websites such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and many others that use CDNs (especially the one from Facebook) seem to load very slow on newest Windows 11. Painfully slow. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m on WiFi or having an ethernet LAN cable plugged in.

What didn’t work?

• Different browsers: I’ve checked with Firefox, Chrome, and Edge to rule out the potential of cache problems or other browser issues. I tried to a clean install of all the browsers with no success. The loading of mentioned websites remains slow as hell.
• Reset Network Settings: I ran all possible commands to reset network interfaces. netsh winsock reset, netsh int ip reset, netsh advfirewall reset, ipconfig /flushdns, ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew. None of this jazz worked. Even tried with netcfg -d command to remove all the network interfaces. Nothing.
• Updated drivers: All my drivers were up to date, so nothing to do here. Still slow.
• Speed Test: I tested my internet connections speed and latency. Even though I was pretty sure my network and internet connection is not slow, else I would experience slow loading of ALL of the websites out there. As you can see, this was most definitely not the case. But anyways … 😉
• Clean install of Windows: I performed a clean Windows 10 installation on a separate drive and updated it to Windows 11 to rule out the possibility of the operating system and any hard drive issues. No success.

After that, I kind of ran out of ideas. But my gut feeling told me it must be something with network adapters, and I actually managed to fix it. So here’s what I did …

The Solution

Please keep in mind that this fix may not work for everyone. There are uncountable numbers of different PCs and laptops, all with varying combinations of hardware. So I can only tell what worked on my Dell G5 5590 laptop, equipped with Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller and Intel Wireless-AC 9560 network interfaces.

LAN

Regarding my Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller, the problem lies in its so-called Killer Prioritization Engine. You can turn on/off this setting in Killer Control Center. I assume they will fix this in the upcoming drivers’ updates, but it’s an easy fix for now. I don’t even need to prioritize anything anyway. As soon as I turned off the Killer Prioritization Engine, the problem went away. The loading of this big boy’s websites was finally superfast again.

WiFi

My Dell G5 5590 comes with SmartByte, a software utility preloaded on some Dell laptops. It controls network prioritization, and as soon as I turn it off, everything is back to normal.

Conclusion

Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram are among the most visited sites on the entire web, and the slow loading times of these websites are an immense pain in the ass. The most plausible cause of this bug, or whatever you may call it, resides somewhere within the drivers of LAN Ethernet and WiFi adapters and their network prioritization engines. I’m confident to say that software engineers will solve the issue via driver updates quite soon. But until then, we are bound to improvise with what we know and what we can do ourselves to avoid this nasty issue.

Please keep in mind that this solution worked for me on specific laptop model, and it may not work for you. But hopefully, it may guide you in the right direction.

I hope I spared some nerves to some of you experiencing similar problems!

Take care,
Cheers 🙂