How To Change MTU Values In Windows
| 26 comments ]

Sometimes you may face problems connecting to the internet where certain websites may not load and others may..Like for example google.com might work but yahoo.com may not.Then the first thing which you would try to do is change your DNS servers ( mostly opendns :D thats what everybody tells you to do) .So you go ahead with their advice and change your DNS servers to opendns.Then reboot your pc and oops..what happened? Nothing???If nothing happened, then dont worry you can try one more thing, and that is changing your MTU values.
MTU meaning Maximum Transmision Unit is basically the size of the packet that is transmitted.Sometimes in certain cases default MTU values may not work depending on your network setup you might have an incompatible MTU configuration.So what you could do then is modify your MTU values.By default Windows uses 1500.Sometimes you may have to lower it down to say 1492 or 1454 to get things working!!
I would recommend you to first try 1492 , if that doesnt work you could try these other values like 1454,1460,1452 .

So here's how you do it in Windows

Step 1 : Go to Start-> Run ( or press the windows symbol on the keyboard + R) and then type regedit.exe in the popup window
Step 2 : You have now entered the registry,Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ Tcpip\ Parameters\ Interfaces
Step 3 : Now under the Interfaces key try finding the correct key which corresponds to your network adapter.. view the contents of the key by clicking on the key and see if you find a key with your network ip address somewhat of the form 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x .That would most likely be the correct key
Step 4 : Once you have found it Create a NEW DWORD VALUE by going to Edit -> New -> DWORD Value and call it MTU
Step 5 : Double click on MTU to open its settings and choose the Decimal Option and type the MTU value ( as i said, first try 1492 , if that doesnt work then try 1454,1460,1452)
Step 6 : Then click on OK and close the Registry Window and Reboot your PC
Step 7 : This should do the trick and hopefully will be able to browse all websites successfully!!

If you want to receive Latest Articles In your Email CLICK HERE

26 comments

Ace News Services said... @ June 11, 2008 at 4:21 AM

Hi Prashanth, May l first thank you for your emails as regards technology and the internet. I have found them most useful and l will continue to read each one and share the information through my network of contacts.

The one that l have found most interesting is this one relating to loading websites, l have for sometime found this to be a problem and will look into modifying the MTU values and will report back my findings. Once again thank you for your help.

Anonymous said... @ June 11, 2008 at 4:29 AM

Hello aceone29,
Thank you so much for you feedback!!I really appreciate it.Regarding the MTU values.I would first recommend you to try changing your DNS servers to opendns.. If none of this works then try MTU values and if things get worse, you can always undo it by removing that Registry value..

cheers mate.
Prash Babu

Priyatam said... @ July 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM

Hi Prasanth..... thanks a lot for the information....

Actually my problem is... I connected to internet through Beetel 440TXI (provided by Airtel) and I have dataone broadband (BSNL)....

I was not able to open sites like ms.com and icici and login to msn messenger (on mac & windows)..

I followed your link to change MTU values.... I found MRU configuration value in beetel modem.... default is entered as 1492.... I changed it to 1452... and to my surprise.... my attempt was successful... I wanted to thank you for the help :)

Anonymous said... @ July 11, 2008 at 4:15 AM

Hello Priyatam,
glad you got it working!!!

PS:Its Prashanth not prasanth!!

Priyatam said... @ July 13, 2008 at 6:35 PM

oh...Yes.. my mistake...

Thanks Prashanth :-)

Rohit said... @ December 11, 2008 at 10:54 AM

hi prashant
changed the MTU but yahoo sites on my laptop still not working...pls suggest what to do
i am using the DNS 61.1.96.69 and 61.1.96.71

Anonymous said... @ December 12, 2008 at 3:37 AM

@Rohit
Try using opendns servers, they would definetly help . Opendns server ips are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 . YOu may make those changes in the router or in your pc
1)make change in router - http://prash-babu.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-configure-dns-server-in-your.html

2)make change in windows - http://prash-babu.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-configuresetup-or-change-your.html

Anonymous said... @ August 16, 2009 at 9:28 AM

WOW THANKS! This really worked when nothing worked after removing the fake XP Anti virus!

Cheers

Prash Babu said... @ August 17, 2009 at 8:14 AM

Glad it worked!!

Anonymous said... @ September 8, 2009 at 5:16 AM

Hi Prash Babu,

some times ago I hvae similar problem. I can not login to google. For that I do number of things. One fine day I roll back all settings & give up. After couple of weeks I can logged in to gmail & yahoo but found that I can not upload any thing.

Can this solve by MTU settings ?

Thanks in Advance.

PS: I like your blog

Prash Babu said... @ September 8, 2009 at 8:42 AM

Yes , MTU could help in this case , do give it a shot!!

Nicole said... @ October 13, 2009 at 9:16 PM

Prashanth, I recently had a problem getting into LinkedIn (whereas on same computer had no problems before). A site linked me to your blog. There is a lot of good information - thanks. However, I tried using OpenDNS and also then resetting the MTU values in windows to no avail. (1492, 1454, 1460, 1452) 1454 was best but it still would not load most pages within LinkedIn. Any other advice?

Prash Babu said... @ October 16, 2009 at 7:48 AM

does this happen only with linkedin? does this work on another machine connected to the same network?

Nicole said... @ November 10, 2009 at 10:27 AM

Prashanth, thank you for your comments. I recently got access to a laptop and had no troubles connecting with that through my wireless. Tried connecting the laptop directly - no problems. Now tried connecting to Linkedin in again on my desktop - no problem.

Hmm, I am not sure what led to the success now since I had stopped trying to use the desktop to contact Linkedin since my last post. In any case, thank you for your assistance.

Anonymous said... @ February 17, 2010 at 2:50 PM

Prashanth i looked into this but when i get 2 interfaces there is 3 different options there and none of them look like my network ip address (btw i live in aussie so the ip address is different from the one you listed)

Anonymous said... @ February 17, 2010 at 5:31 PM

ok i just found wat i was looking for and changed what you said but for my xbox360 it is connected by a wire 2 the wireless modem it doesnt let me go online cause it says my MTU needs to be higher than 1364 so how do i change it for my xbox360???

Prash Babu said... @ February 19, 2010 at 6:35 AM

is the xbox connected via the machine? since your changing the MTU In windows , it has nothing to do with the XBOX.

Sandeep said... @ January 29, 2011 at 2:31 AM

Thanks a lot!!!
After hundreds of pages of searches, thousands of calls to the crap bsnl CC and hours of research this one did the trick. My bad that it took so long for me to find this page. :)

Sandeep said... @ January 29, 2011 at 2:35 AM

Please also tel me how to do the same procedure in my iphone which i connect to BSNL BB using wifi.
Thanks in advance!

Prash Babu said... @ February 1, 2011 at 5:32 AM

In such cases its better to change the MTU in your router itself.most routers have that option

Thennarasu said... @ May 19, 2011 at 7:23 AM

I tried this,still I'm facing this few websites loading problem.I'm having BSNL Broadband.But some times i'm using my brother's data card MTS Mblaze at the time the websites loading normally.Is any fault in ISP.

Anonymous said... @ November 9, 2011 at 9:07 AM

Thanks a ton Prashanth.
Used to have a Beetel 440TXI wi-fi router from airtel. changed over to BSNL dataone broadband and same router. sites like yahoo mail took ages to open, and login never used to happen.
Changed to Open DNS servers and changed MRU from 1492 to 1452.
It works!! Kudos!

Anonymous said... @ March 18, 2012 at 4:45 AM

I'm laughing at myself now :) after tearing my hair apart not knowing why some sites aren't loading, i change my router's MTU size to 1452 and walla it works. Thanks for reminding me about this. Stupid thing to do by the router's makers to not have a lower MTU size or Auto negotiation capabilities.

sachin said... @ June 9, 2012 at 8:18 PM

hello brthr i using also beetel 450TC1 modem provid by airtel on bsnl dataone broadband and m also have same problem as discuss above but by changing the dns server setting and mtu value my problem not solve ... still i cant access yhoomail and presentjobs.com and some other websites ....brthr help me ..
pls give me solution on my id sh.sachinkumar@gmail.com

sachin said... @ June 9, 2012 at 8:20 PM

and i am using windows 7 ultimate....

Unknown said... @ July 28, 2012 at 12:13 PM

i am using windows7 ultimate and after step 2 i have a confusion since i have 2 vales one for default gateway its value is 192.168.1.1 and ip address 192.168.1.2 and when i try to ping the by the value ping -f -l 1500 192.168.1.1 i get error message packet needs to be fragmented but DF set but when i do the same for the address 192.168.1.2 i get the reply message without any problems ... so since there are 2 address in my registry which value should i find to change the MTU value

Post a Comment