MS Office Applications cannot "Save As" on the network drive

[tnx01]

I have the following problem.

When the user is trying to "Save As" an MS Office File(Word, Excell, Access, .pst, etc) on a network drive he/she gets a message "disk is full" or similar. The copy/paste in Windows Explorer works fine for this drive. The file server is running Win NT 4.0 sp6, clients - Win 2000 Pro and Office 2000 Pro with latest SPs. The problem is dynamic: everything works fine for a while after server's reboot then it comes beack again. It seems that more users are on the network - faster the problem occurs after reboot.

Microsoft is working on this problem for more then a month now! The following programs running on the server were mentioned as the probable cause: McAfee Antivirus, Veritas Backup Exec 9.0 Agent.

All the correspondent user permissions were triple-cheked! Tons of log files and reports were sent to Microsoft. All possible combinations of upgrading, disabling, uninstalling/reinstalling of mentioned applications were performed as well as regestry editing. None of that helped.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

 

[FredWagner]

How are your server and workstation NIC's set for speed and simplex/duplex? If the server's NIC is set to Auto, that can cause performance problems under load. We work best with all parties set to 100/Full.

Fred Wagner
frwagne@longbeach.gov

 

[yizhar]

HI.

In addition to above suggestion - check also networking cables and mainly the SWITCH(s) you have.
When a switch causes problems, they are sometimes very strange and dificult for troubleshooting.
Can you describe the physical network elements (network devices, lan/wan links, NICs, cabling, etc).
Try replacing the SWITCH which the server is connecting to (if you're short in budjet, simply put an old HUB for a test period).

> All the correspondent user permissions were triple-cheked!
Does users have permission do delete files? Did you try with Full Control for users?
The "Save As" dialog might be trying to create a temporary file and deleting it to see if the destination folder is writeable.

> were mentioned as the probable cause: McAfee Antivirus, Veritas Backup Exec 9.0 Agent
Do you have other related products/features on the server, like Quota Management or Undelete?
Try disabling McAfee on both the server and some test workstations.



Yizhar Hurwitz

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[tnx01]

Thanks for replying!
- Server's NIC is set up to Auto Detect speed and duplex. Will change that and do some testing.
- Users do have full control permissions for this particular folder so it shouldn't be the delete tmp files problem.
- We do not have programs that may monitor file status other then Backup Exec and McAfee. And we did try disabling, uninstalling/reinstalling, upgrading both together and separately.
- We have a rack mounted switches that will be hard to replace, even temporarily. The thing is that we have this Cat 5 switch/cabling setup for 3 years now and we didn't have any problems with it so far. All workstations and servers have 100 NICs. We do have a Frame Relay for WAN, but the problem exists within the local segment of the netwok.

Thank you.

 

[yizhar]

HI.

> We do not have programs that may monitor file status other then Backup Exec and McAfee.
> And we did try disabling, uninstalling/reinstalling, upgrading both together and separately.
You should try disabling anti-virus both at client and server side for the test. Did you?
At the client side, if you have that option, try to disable scanning of network drives for the test.

> We have a rack mounted switches that will be hard to replace
You can test by connecting the server NIC to a different port on a different switch (not the one currently connected to it).
When you see the problem again, test if a workstation connected to the same switch as the server has different results then other.

> The file server is running Win NT 4.0 sp6, clients - Win 2000 Pro and Office 2000 Pro with latest SPs
The problems can also be related to SP4 for Win2000. Try installing a test machin with other OS like Win9x/NT4, or 2000 with older SP level.
If applicable you can do similar test at the server side - install a new W2K/2003 server as a test machine, and put few specific shared folder(s) on it, and point workstation to that server using logon script or other method (manualy on few workstations is also an option).
If you don't have a W2K/2003 disk, you can ask for evaluation disk from Microsoft or dealers.



Yizhar Hurwitz

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[yizhar]

HI.

More tips - related to Office application now:

Try using "winword /a" at some test workstations.

Do you use any macro in your office documents (for example Adobe PDF, or PALM pilot add-ons)?

> It seems that more users are on the network - faster the problem occurs after reboot.
I guess that not the number of workstations is the matter, but a specific workstation or specific document(s) are causing the problem. Try using common sense and human engineering (ask the users) to find the originating workstation.

You probably have already searched Microsoft Google and other web-sites for the error message, but try searching again. You'll find many articles that might point you in the right direction even if they do not exactly apply to your problem.




Yizhar Hurwitz

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar