Slow Novell Drive Access

Many thanks for the suggestion.  I've tried it on a PC that is currently giving me major problems and unfortunately it is still misbehaving.  I also found this article (http://tinyurl.com/yf2t5zz):
http://www.novell.com/support/php/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=7004092&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_TID_1_1&dialogID=94771091&stateId=0 0 94767978
but have not had any luck trying things out from it (eg deleted all local printers, uninstalled the antivirus).

I also noticed that if I log in as workstation only and then use the Novell login item off the tray icon that it is really slow authenticating to each server in turn.  Does that give any more clues?  Thanks!

This particular PC I've now reimaged (which has taken it back to 4.91 SP3) and it's now working again.  SLPinfo had shown the same DA IP address as on my own PC.
I'll ask our main Novell person about thw SLP Scope when I can but I probably won't be able to look into that for a few days but will get back to you with the result of that when I can.

I'm sure I'll be coming up against more affected client PCs so if you or anyone else has any more suggestions I can try on the client side, please do let me know.
Thanks for your ongoing help!

Log on is slow - the results window spends ages at each server it has to authenticate to.
Once that is done, browsing of the mapped drives and their folders is normal speed.
On double-clicking a file, at first nothing seems to happen, after some seconds, Word/Excel will open and after yet more seconds the file opens.  The whole process seems to take up to a minute or so.
The files we see this on are Office 2003 files (but of course that's the majority of what users are saving on the network).

I'll check on the client settings when I'm back there tomorrow but the configuration should be no different between the working PCs and the dodgy ones.  It's as though something somewhere in the networking gets upset since a reimage fixed the last one.  The previous 3 I'd seen seemed to start working once I'd removed QoS.  Next time I find a really dodgy PC I might try removing the Novell Client and then resetting TCP/IP and Winsock using netsh before reinstalling.

Perhaps of interest is that I noted whilst experimenting with the very poorly PC that even opening the networks folder in XP resulted in a delay before the window appeared with the LAN interface visible in it.

It'll be next week before I can query about the locking settings on the server side.

Thanks for the help!

Sounds like the unc path filter in SP5 that deroode mentioned may be of help.

Further, there are "tweaks" that can be done with the UNC path filter to ensure Windoze Exploder doesn't look for Windows-specific things on NetWare volumes, and vice-versa.  That "feature" of Windows XP is the biggest cause of slowdowns - it always wants to use the Windows redirector first when browsing to a network location, and assumes that it will find stuff that ain't there, and the lag is waiting for that search to time out.

I did try the SP5 Client along with that new filter but it didn't make a difference.  Would the UNC Path Filter affect just the opening of files, as from its description I had expected it would have made browsing the drives slow as well - which hasn't been affected.
The thing that puzzles me most is the seeming randomness of which PCs are affected (the problem does not follow the users from PC to PC) and why a rebuild sorts it.

Will be checking the other client settings mentioned earlier shortly and will then get back to you.

2)  Is File Caching disabled on the Novell client? - this is enabled
3)  Is File Commit enabled on the Novell client? - this is disabled

On the next PC I see that is severely affected I will try switching these two settings.

I've not come across another affected PC yet, so sorry for the delay with this question.

DNS on the clients is pointing at our internal DNS Server.
The WebClient service suggestion is intriguing - I'll give that a go next time too.  Thanks.

Still waiting for another affected PC to turn up.  Thanks for your patience.

The three PCs I mentioned originally have started playing up again!
These ones are on an NT4 domain but are otherwise like I have said.  Novell is highest in the provider order.  I've added the Windows servers they access to the BadServer key but the problem accessing Novell servers is still remaining.  Novell Logon is very slow with it taking a few seconds to authenticate to each server in turn.  Then clicking an Office file takes ages before Word loads and then another long delay before the document appears.

I tried deleting HKCU\Netware  and searched for stale UNC paths in the registry too.  I also tried switching the client's File Caching and File Commit settings as earlier suggestion - also to no avail.

Please find attached the output from  SLPINFO /A   (with the Tree name and some IPs changed!)

Running out of ideas here...!

*****************************************************
***         Novell Client for Windows NT          ***
***         Service Location Diagnostics          ***
*****************************************************
 
SLP Version:             4.91.3.0
SLP Start Time:          1:58:23pm    12/16/2009
Last I/O:                1:59:11pm    12/16/2009
Total Packets:           Out: 37          In: 11
Total Bytes:             Out: 3882        In: 3039
 
 
SLP Operational Parameters                     Values
-------------------------------                ------------
Static Scopes                                  NO
Static Directory Agents                        NO
Active Discovery                               YES
Use Broadcast for SLP Multicast                NO
Use DHCP for SLP                               YES
SLP Maximum Transmission Unit                  1400 bytes
SLP Multicast Radius                           32 hops
 
 
SLP Timers                                     Values
-------------------------------------          ------------
Give Up on Requests to SAs                     15 seconds
Close Idle TCP Connections                     5 minutes
Cache SLP Replies                              1 minutes
SLP Default Registration Lifetime              10800 seconds
Wait Before Giving Up on DA                    5 seconds
Wait Before Registering on Passive DA          1-2 seconds
 
 
Scope List                                     Source(s)
----------------------------------------       ------------
<unscoped>
TREENAME                                          DA
 
 
DA IP Address     Source(s)   State   Version  Local Interface   Scope(s)
---------------   ---------   -----   -------  ---------------   ---------------
 
192.168.y.z       DHCP        UP      SLPV2    192.168.a.b       TREENAME
 
 
Local Interface   192.168.a.b
---------------------------------
Operational State:       UP
Operating Mode(s):       MCAST,STATIC-DA
SA/UA Scopes:            <unscoped>,TREENAME
Last I/O:                1:59:11pm    12/16/2009
Total Packets:           Out: 37          In: 11
Total Bytes:             Out: 3882        In: 3039
Last Addr Out:           192.168.y.z
Last Addr In:            192.168.y.z

                                              

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I *appear* to have got those three working.
One Novell document says how opening an Office file causes all the printers on the PC to be queried and that got me looking closer at these 3 PCs' printers.

Although the printers were all correctly set up and alive, I noticed the PCs all had a printer that used the "HP Standard TCP/IP Port".  I have had a lot of problems with modern HP printer drivers causing all kinds of freaky issues so I reconfigured them using the normal Windows "Standard TCP/IP Port" and then deleted the old HP one from Server Properties.  This seems to have fixed the problem, although on one PC I also had to remove it from CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors too!

I'd also been deleting all occurences of the MountPoints2 key in the registry during increasingly wild attempts to try and find the cause but I suspect this was not involved in the fix.  Let's see what happens...

Many thanks for the info.  Automatic search for network folders and printers is already unchecked and simple file-sharing is disabled.
The treename does not have an A-Record in DNS - I would have thought though that if this were a significant issue that we would have a huge number of PCs misbehaving.

I came across another PC with the Novell-Office issue on thursday.  Once again, removing all traces of the "HP Standard TCP/IP Port" appears to have been the fix.  I also found a thread online where someone had had their domain controller freezing every 2-3 days due to this thing.

Looks as though this is going to prove to be the definitive fix for what I've been seeing.

It does make sense - just wanted to put that other stuff out there.

I've not been crazy about a lot of the software HP has been throwing in with their "drivers" lately - they're getting to be as bad as Lexmark in their invasiveness.

<rant>Yeah lots of our LaserJet P2055dn devices do stupid things such as print mirror images, print jobs only when receiving a subsequent one or crash the spooler or crash Office apps.  Plus for 6 months there was a bug where the built-in JetDirect would keep forgetting its settings until the firmware was updated in 11/2008.  We have to use the 3005 driver to make the things work reliably.
And then the CP3520 was similarly unstable until I gave it the 2605 driver.
And don't even get me started on the OfficeJet "Pro" K550 and its black/yellow print head woes...</rant>

Errrr do I sound bitter?

No more bitter than a large percentage of HP's customer base.  With good reason, if I might add.

Don't know who's to blame, if HP's downturn started with Carly, or what.  They lost my respect when they bought Compaq and proceeded to ruin the ProLiant server line, and totally blew it by not using the Compaq support site as a model for all of HP's products, but rather took away all that goodness from the Compaq product line by using the old, tired, hard to navigate HP support site for the Compaq products in addition to the other HP stuff.

I do like their latest ProCurve switches, though - the 5400zl series, anyway.