Block chain downloading VERY slowly

[bionicghost]

Ever since i've been using bitcoin, the block chain has been downloading at an excrucuatingly slow pace [about 1 block per 5 seconds]. I used to think that it was beacuase of my abbysal download speed [it used to go at about 100 kbps] but now that i have a 1mbps connection, the block download is still going rather slow [it doesn't help that i'm at block 149696.]

Any suggestions on how to speed it up, or why is this happening?

Using windows vista 86 bits

[Stephen Gornick]

Ever since i've been using bitcoin, the block chain has been downloading at an excrucuatingly slow pace [about 1 block per 5 seconds]. I used to think that it was beacuase of my abbysal download speed [it used to go at about 100 kbps] but now that i have a 1mbps connection, the block download is still going rather slow [it doesn't help that i'm at block 149696.]

Any suggestions on how to speed it up, or why is this happening?

Using windows vista 86 bits

Older versions of the client had performance issues.  Are you using the latest version of the client?
 - http://www.bitcoin.org

[aaa801]

Blockchain always downloads slow for me
download them from this and use -rescan if non clear wallet
http://pro2host.com/cryptocoin/

[Blizz]

http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/
You can download a daily blockchain snapshot to speed up the process a lot.

[Pieter Wuille]

The slow part is not downloading the blockchain, it's verifying it and building a transaction index for it (the blkindex.dat file).

You can download a premade blockchain + index, but that implies a certain amount of trust in the supplier of the files, as they are not verified as thoroughly that way.