I am having the same issue. It takes forever to initiate the connection, then takes a while to authenticate. However, once I am connected, the speed is just fine. I have tried all of the suggestions in this thread, but am still having the issue. Other Windows 7 machines do not have the same issue, even when connecting to the same server. I have also verified that I have the latest NIC driver (Intel 82579LM Gigabit). Has anyone figured out how to fix this?