Slow File Transfer

After a few days of playing around, I somehow made the network of my Desktop
PC (Win98SE/External Modem) and my Laptop PC (WinXP Home) work together. I
am using NetGear wireless.

I can tranfer and work with files both ways. I can access the Internet from
either machine. It's just like it was before my old Laptop PC (IBM ThinkPad
600/Win98SE) harddrive crashed and burned.

Except.....

Transferring files from the Desktop to the Laptop is miserably slow. If I
open a 100k sized Excel file located on the Desktop PC, it takes about 2
minutes for it to load and appear on the Laptop PC.

I noticed the laptop is checking the file for viruses before displaying the
file in Excel. The same goes for any file in any application. It is
downright slow.

My wireless network connection (peer-to-peer) is running at 11.0 Mbps with
good signal strength.

Throughput, on the other hand, seems slow, but I'm not sure if what I'm
seeing is normal or not. The Rx Throughput when I'm accessing a spreadsheet
file from the Desktop to open in Excel on the Laptop ranges anywhere from 8k
to 14k bps. That seems much, much slower than it should be.

My IBM Laptop, when it was working, didn't exhibit a slow file transfer and
displaying problem like this. But, I never looked to see what the
throughput actually was during a file transfer.

Can anyone advise, please?

Anyone have any ideas how to correct this slowness?

Also, how can I stop winxp from checking each file for a virus every time I
open it?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

Regards

dale martin
houston, tx