Browsing network drives suddenly VERY slow/hang

[overmonkey]

Hi friends,

I'm sitting at a workstation that is, for all intents and purposes, running fine. It is a win2k machine, part of a win2k server domain. They were originally set up with roaming profiles. Yesterday I removed one user from his roaming profile by removing the path in his properties on the server. (he had decided to store his 750M pst on his desktop, along with a few other LARGE files, pushing his profile to 2.27GB) That is the only change made to the server that I am aware of.

Today, another user on another PC is having very weird errors. Her computer is completely stable using local applications and local files. Her login script correctly mapped her shared and personal network drives. However, attempting to access these drives or any file stored therein, creates a pause/hang that last several minutes, after which the files are displayed or accessed.

I'm not a very experienced MS server admin - profiles are only now starting to make sense. I tried logging on as another user and got the same issue. I tried copying the users profile and logging in to that - same issue.

I have read something about cached profiles, but I can't find anything specific. I'm morally sertain that this should be a simple issue, but I'm having no joy.

Please help!

Thanks,
Ned

 

[jdeaner]

I would check for increased network activity. Run netstat from the command prompt (start->run->cmd) of the hanging/slow computer and see what connections are established and at what ports. Also run this on the server. Keep an eye out for random network activity. You can always use a packet sniffer to see what's going on traffic wise.

 

[overmonkey]

There is no unusal traffic, according to enlightenment. The system is not exactly hanging; it seems to be more delaying, A LONG TIME. For example, user's pst file (outlook data file) is located on mapped P drive. From My Computer, double-click P drive, then take a seat. Five-ten minutes later, shows subfolders.

AAARGH.

I had suspected cabling, even, but I'm copying her pst file locally (300M) and its taking less than 50 seconds. Good enough for me.

But why so long to browse into the folder? Is there some way to see if Active Directory is corrupted or otherwise unresponsive?

 

[jdeaner]

How about an antivirus software? Do you have any real-time exchange protection running?

 

[dusme]

We are experiencing a similar problem on our network; We are W2K Workstations on a 2K domain. The users will login most of the way (they pull roaming profiles) and then hourglass in the taskbar until they either crash the machine or call one of us. Checking taskmanager will show no major CPU culprits (idle is using well over 90% in every documented case)no wierd or unusual processes even listed, neither SUS nor Virus update logs show any activity that could be responsible, the machines are clean and updated... When logging off or shutting down the system through C/A/D the only clue is that a lot of them come up with a explorer.exe not responding message and about half with CTFMon.exe not responding. Event Viewer is nondiagnostic.

 

[LoJACK]

have you guys try check the DNS server? Try running nslookup in the command prompt to see if you are able to resolve the computer name. It might be the fact that the clients are trying to look for the domain server but can't find it due to DNS problem.

LoJACK



Thanks,
LoJACK

 

[overmonkey]

I've made a little progress on this - check the server disk quotas - my user was trying to sync 7GB with his profile. I'm still having the problem intermittently, but not seriously enough to pull me off other project atm. Continuing to ofollow this thread for a solution, though.

I need a good reference for setting up DNS opn a private network - naming conventions, internal DNS vs external DNS, etc.

 

[LisaWo]

Has there been an increase of your users desktop icons, favorites or putting desktop pictures on?

 

[Lightspeed1]

LoJack is hitting things right on the head, make sure the clients are pointed at the local DNS server (should be your DC) as far as setting DNS up, when you ran dcpromo on the server it should have installed DNS. W2K is HEAVILY dependent on DNS for Sooo many things in a w2k domain.

Regards,
Lightspeed1

 

[overmonkey]

Thanks for the tips - O
;; have to see if I can find out how the server was set up; I'm more of a network/router guy than a server admin. Can you re-run dcpromo without adverse effects?

I'll google it - thanks for the tip.

 

[web4fun]

Recently experiencing at 3:20p.m. daily, the network drives become extremely slow to respond when browsing. This sounds like a virus but we run scans daily and are up to date with virus definitions. We are running Active Directory in mixed mode and still are running Wins on our domain controller. Our backup Wins server is on another subnet which back on NT4 was not recommended. The problem is experienced by a multitude of users but NOT every user which is even more bizarre! We've check DNS and WINS, event logs, tried unmapping drives and remapping them, etc. We've run sniffer programs on the network but all activity appears normal. The slow response is also evident on the Domain Controller and various servers.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

 

[5jgibbs]

if you ping the server ... what kind of times do you get over a period of time

do this

ping ip of server -n 2500

this will ping it 2500 times.. and see if there are any MAJOR changes in responce times..

 

[smartin0924]

I am currently experiencing this same issue. Overmonkey, did you find anything out that might be causing this?