I've still not found the problem but file transfers between pc's on the lan are fast its just the lan site of my SME box that is very slow. Could this be related to changing the lan side ip from 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.1 when I replaced my old server? Maybe the reboot triggered the problem?
Could the problem be related to one of the contribs I've loaded? ( Greymatter, Awstats, Gallery, Netjuke, sysmon, phpgedview, indexer) These all seemed to install and work without major probelms.
any clues about anything I could try would be great as I'm at a loss as to what to look at next.