I have a small network running 4 client computers (XP) Pro and a 2003 server. My network shares quickbooks pro from a mapped drive, a piece of proprietary software called CLIPS and has a folder with client information mostly jpgs, excel and word documents.
Quickbooks and CLIPS run fine all day no problem with speed at all, but the excel and word documents, after a short period about an hour or so after the client computers have been running, please note only the clients , the acessing of files from the shared folder slow down completely. This is really driving me up the wall, if i restart the machines the files move fast after a while it slows down again only on excel and word, the jpgs are fine excel fine and so is word, is this a server problem or client problem??
If that doesn't help, check the following links:
Files on Network Shares Open Slowly or Read-Only or You Receive an Error Message
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;814112
or:
OFF: How to Troubleshoot Performance Issues in Office XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815049
or:
OFF: Office Program Opens Slowly With Norton Installed
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;262530
Hope that helps you!
James