Hello, All: My office is experiencing a minor but extremely annoying (and at the moment, insoluble) problem. Problem: slow access of application utilities and files after the company upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional clients attached to NetWare 5.0 servers. Background and Problem Description We migrated 250 end users on Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 1 and Office 2000 SP 1a. There were no changes made to the NetWare servers and no changes made to the NT 4.0 Servers. We are using Novell client version 4.8 for the workstations. is 4.8. Prior to upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional we had extremely fast access to applications on NT 4.0 Workstation. For example, we could open Word, hit the folder to open an existing document, hit the drop down list and open a list of attached network drives and the list came up instantaneously - whether it was peak or off-peak usage. We have already checked our bandwidth and replication. That's not the problem. We also have compatible hardware, memory and system device drivers Additionally, when we went to save/store files, performance was also instantaneous regardles of the size of the file or the application (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc As soon as we installed W2K Professional - performance slowed noticeably - it takes about the same amount of time to launch the application but once you're in the application when you go to access a file - it takes 10 to 14 seconds to create the drop-down file. Once that happens you could go from one directory to another directory very quickly. Fortunately the performance delays have not resulted in application freezes or time outs! :-)) Another anomaly: If a user closes out of the application and then re-opens it a few minutes later performance is back to normal. For example, the drop down menu in Word comes up instantaneously - so we think there's caching going on. Similarly, if we go to launch Explorer - My Document is defaulted to one ot the NetWare drives and that takes 10 to 15 seconds to launch Windows Explorer - but at no point has anyone gotten timed out... At this point we're scrambling for an explanation. We've looked through all the technical documentation from both Novell and Microsoft and talked to technical people. One of Microsoft's engineers paid us a visit and said the company was aware of the problem and the best solution they could offer was for us to migrate to Windows 2000 Server and get off the mixed mode network! (Big surprise) We also found that we could improve performance slightly and reduce the delays to a near-tolerable level by going into the Advanced property settings of My Neighborhood in W2K - (there is a Provider Order (Microsoft Windows Network or NetWare Services) settings that you can set for NetWare or Microsoft - the general issue is that if the Microsoft Windows Provider is selected you get better performance on the workstation. IN summary, this is no show stopping problem but an ongoing, very annoying issue. Our end users are impatient at the delays. Does anyone have any ideas or similiar experiences? Any and all input/advice is appreciated. Kindest Regards, Laura DiDio Giga Information Group Cambridge, Mass. (617) 577-4706 http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ntsysadmin_list_charter.htm
