Weird Network Problem

Explain a bit further if you will. Are you saying that when you open the document from the W Drive it opens slowly and that when you open it locally when its saved to the Client computer it opens fast?

There can be a whole lot of reason for this. Please let me know a bit more about how your network is setup if you can. Is it a Domained Network using Active Directory? Do you have more than one server? Do you have a LAN AntiVirus program install and active? Etc...

When opening a document on the W Drive through Windows Explorer it opens slowly.  If you open word and then browse to the w drive and open the same document it opens faster.  This happens network wide.

It is a domain network with active directory.

Grisoft Anti-Virus network edition is installed.  All the updating and controlling is done from the server.  So yes there is a LAN Anti-Virus.

Does this answer your questions?  I am not sure what else to tell you.  Other then the server is running DNS and DHCP.

Thanks!

There are many things to look at here.  What are the speeds of the NICs?  How bout the switch port speeds?  Running Full Duplex?  What kind of load is on the server (use Performance Monitor)?  Standard CAT5e cabling or CAT6?  

The NICS are all 100Mb/s and so are the Hubs.  1 16 port and 1 5 port Hubs.  The service should not be that loaded.  There are only 15 Clients.  No databases, just file sharing and one access database.  All Cat5e cabling.

Well, that is the first thing I would change..  Dump the hubs and get switches instead.  Hubs broadcast packets to all ports, and cause a lot on unneeded network traffic...

That is true, but it is not a large enough network to congest it that much.  It has to be some kind of setting on the server.  Like DNS or WINS or something like that.

Have you tried putting the Windows 2003 Server's IP address as the primary DNS number on the XP Pro SP2 computers?  Assuming your 2003 Server is setup as a DNS server.

The Primary DNS is the servers address through DHCP.

Thanks

How large are the files they are trying to open?  You might try created a small .txt file, and opening it with notepad to see if there is a difference...  just a thought..

Good Idea...I will try that.

Thanks

Yea, our network is fairly large (800 users) and I get calls on this type of question a lot.  We force redirection to our file servers, and some of the word files are over 1 MB in size...  The users don't understand that these must be broken into < 1500 byte packets for transfer back to their PCs and you can imagine my frustration in trying to explain it to them!  :)

I can see that.  How do you force the redirection?  Just out of curiousity.

Do you currently have 800 users redirecting to just one Server? If your doing that you should look hard at splitting the load to more servers. Redirect certain groups to other file servers, or something along that line. Whats your Disk I/O on that server? Look into that.

laz..  I was only referring to my network of 800+ users..  We multiple file server (Unix) balancing the load, and 10 other various servers doing the work for us, so we run a pretty efficient network.

If you want to redirect folders, you can use Group Policy.  That is my preferable method.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/ServerHelp/6eed436f-5b05-4eaa-9525-c0c429fcf9f6.mspx

opps..  We HAVE multiple file server (Unix) balancing the load<<   :)

Ah... well thats is good to hear.. ;) thanks for clarifying that. It sound like either you had a huge problem waiting to happpen or you had a Supper computer with some really cool I/O on it. LOL

Okay...I finally make it to that problem network today.  The problem seems to be that when you close a word or excel document that is on the network, it takes like 30 secs to close.  Again they are running a windows server 2003 64bit (first one I have seen) with Windows XP Professional Clients in a Active Directory Domain Environment.  All computers are using Office 2003 Pro.  Everyone's PST files for Outlook are located on the server and outlook runs fine!  Only Word and Excell seem to have the problem.  I tried Wordpad, Notepad, Adobe Reader...everything else acted normally.

So I disabled all Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus and that did not work.
I also tried what it says on this link... http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833041
I also turned off some monitoring software that they have.

It must be a server thing since it is happening on all the computers on the network.

Please let me know what you think!

Thanks

Yea, our AS400's are running Unix.   serving files is pretty smooth here...  800 users off of one box would be a nightmare in the making, eh?  :)  We also run a mixture of Novell and 2003 DCs..  I think at last count we had 25 servers running in all..  There are 4 support admins running the entire network, including tech support for all our users...  Most of our TS calls involve printing, lol, right?  Amazingly, most days are fairly light, but..  knock on wood!

mtlclint..  does the size of the file (word or excel) make any difference at all?  (I have some users that love to place large graphics on their documents, and ask why it is so slow...)

Also:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;280821&spid=2530&sid=280

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;830561&spid=2530&sid=280

The size of the document does not make any dfference.  I have tried word files with sizes from 5kb to 2 MB.  Relativly small!

Okay....

I have been activally working at this problem for a couple of hours now.  Here is what I have done.
1.  Restarted Server
2.  Removed Re-Direction of My Docs to Server Share
3.  Installe Open Office and the problem does not happen with Open Office 2.0
4.  Dis-abled Computer Bowser Service on the Client
5.  Turn Off Allow Indexing Service on the Share
6.  Turn off automatically search for network and printers
7.  Changes the TcpAckTicks to 0 in the Server Registry
8.  Turn off Digital Signing in Default Domain Controller in Admin Tools on Server (Not sure if I did this Right)
9.  The last think I tried was to connect to the share with my laptop that is a member of another domain and it worked perfectly!  Everything opened and closed perfectly.  So it has to do some with the domain control.  Any ideas?

PLEASE LET ME KNOW ASAP!  THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP THUS FAR!!!  U Guys are Grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Thanks

Okay...

I installed Office 97 and the problem did not happen, so what is up with Office 2003?  As soon as I installed Office 2003 then it happened again!


Thanks

That is an excellent question...  after reading your posts, I am very curious as to why this is happening myself...  What we need in here is an Office expert!  (My file servers are Novell, and I don't have this issue with our 2003 Office products..)

What you might do is ask a small pts question in the Office area, pointing to this thread..

FE

I wasted a whole day working on this, so tomorrow I will be paying for some tech support from Microsoft.  Where is the best place to go for tech support from Microsoft?

Fatal_Exception----I have posted this in the Office forum.  Thanks!

The other thing that I tried since posting was to move some of the files from the server to a client on the network, share the directory and then see what happens.  And guess what...it worked GREAT!  So I think that it has to be something with the Server?  When I would locally on the server, or through the mapped drive on the server it works fine.

If you have any ideas please let me know.  What about OPLOCKS?  I am not sure, but maybe?

Do I only disable it on the server?  What about on the clients?

Do you know where to get free tech support from Microsoft?

I believe you only need to do this on the server..  that being said, I have never set this fix, so am not sure...  :)

I am a member of Technet, so I get free calls to MS when I need them....  but you may have to pay for it..

MS has several options for support..

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/support/technical.mspx

I sure think that it something with the server, but I do not know.  When I take a few of the work problem files, and place them in a new share the problem disappears.  SO WEIRD!!  I am on the phone wth MS and the server people are transfering me to office support.  Thanks for the help so far!  I will let you know.

SO WEIRD!  is right!  look forward to hearing MS's take on this...

I have been on the phone engineers from office, network and now waiting for server....they think it is a shell issue on the 64bit server.  Will let you know

After being on the phone for 6.5 hours  with an engineer from office, network and server....the solution was to turn off oplocks!!!!  Believe it or not!
Thanks for all the help guys!

Whoa..  was that link I provided the correct way to do this?  Unbelievable!

Yep...that link was the same thing the MS Guys took me through!  I thought about do that yesterday and before I called MS Tech Support...but never tried it because I did not think it would work.

Thanks for your help!!!

6.5 hours on the phone and you had the answer all the time!  LOL, eh?  :)

Glad I could come in and learn something with you!

FE

and thanks for coming back and closing this..  have a great day!

FE