I have seen performance issues where a Windows client (Explorer) takes a
while to display a file listing on a remote computer, but then it
accesses it just fine. Generally speaking, this is the opposite of what
you describe, but it could be related.
In investigating this, the problem (not the symptom, the actual problem)
turned out to be invalid shortcuts to network shares. These invalid
shortcuts are left behind from when a server or share once existed on
the network but has since been removed.
When initially browsing the network, Windows attempts to access all the
remote shares it knows about BEFORE displaying any listings, rather than
accessing the remote share only if the user requests it. This seems to
be especially problematic with Microsoft Word and Excel when opening
documents.
There are several places to look for these stale or invalid shares:
1. "My Network Places" -- Open this up, and delete any shortcuts that
point to remote servers or shares that no longer exist. It's actually
safe to delete ALL of the network shortcuts (named like "Someshare on
someserver (servername)"). Usually these are created automatically.
2. "My Computer" -- Disconnect (remove) any network drive mappings that
point to nonexistent shares or servers.
3. "Desktop" -- same thing as My Network Places; remove any invalid
shortcuts to network shares. I don't think that these cause a problem as
described above, but it can't hurt to remove them.
4. Registry --
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints
(MountPoints2 in XP or later) -- there may be subkeys in the form of
##server#share. Delete any keys that point to nonexistent servers or shares.
Lastly, if you are using Windows XP or later, disable "Automatically
search for network folders and printers." To do so, open My Computer,
click Tools - Folder Options, View tab, and it's in there. When enabled,
Windows will fill up your "My Network Places" with shortcuts to any
network shares it finds, and will fill up your Printers folder with
"Auto...." printers.
Note that each of these things are on a PER PROFILE basis. You will need
to check each Windows user login for these issues.
I can't guarantee that this will solve your problem, but since you
mention that you've replaced a server, there's a good chance that there
are some stale & invalid shortcuts lying around. It could be that
Windows periodically is going out there looking for these nonexistent
shares, and in the process interrupts your connection. Hey, it's worth a
shot.
--Jonathan Johnson
Ryan Wright wrote:
List,
I apologize for the "newbie" nature of this post; I am sure there is
an easy answer somewhere, but I've tried all the search terms I can
think up and can't find it.
I have some video archived on a White Box 4 machine. I watch it on a
Windows XP box in the other room by mapping a drive to a Samba share.
Seemingly at random, my video stream will halt due to an inability to
receive data from the server. If I pause for a few seconds and resume,
everything is usually fine. This generally happens only once or twice
per hour, but it's annoying.
The video is not huge. We're talking ~350MB xvid files, 45 minutes
each (compressed network TV shows). The Samba server used to be a
Windows 2000 Server and the same video files worked perfectly from
there. Network is gigabit on the server side, 100mbit on the client
side - though even wireless should be able to stream these files.
Virtually no traffic on the network (just my computers and they mostly
sit idle unless I'm using them).
I saw this problem again last night when copying ~10GB worth of files
from another XP box to the Samba share. The copy stopped a couple of
times, telling me the network path no longer existed, but after
clicking OK I could still browse the share just fine. It's like an
intermittant, very temporary glitch.
Stats:
White Box Linux 4 (kernel 2.6.9-5)
Samba 3.0.10-1.4E
Relevant smb.conf:
[global]
workgroup = WRIGHT
netbios name = SATURN
server string = Saturn
security = domain
idmap uid = 15000-20000
idmap gid = 15000-20000
winbind use default domain = Yes
encrypt passwords = yes
password server = jupiter
"jupiter" is a Win2k server & PDC.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Ryan
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