ok, this is for the real microsoft gurus......I have a client that has a small 8 system network. They just recently bought 3 new HP/Compaq dc5000mt systems with Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 (original OEM load) on NTFS. They have turned one of the new systems into a "pseudo server" (server/workstation). They make signs and they keep all their old jobs in one folder for the program they use to create the signs. The folder has close to 10,000 files and is about 2.5GB. The folder is shared and share name is "jobs" and is mapped to the other computers. When one of the new XP systems click on the network drive or they open the folder through the "open file" on their program; it takes about 30 seconds for it to pull down a list of all the files. First I think hard drive, or hub or all the other usuals that would bottleneck it. So I checked out the hardware stats on the "server" while they accessed the folder and pulled files. And it hardly did anything to the machine. What I noticed was when the XP machine is getting a list of files from the server, the network bandwidth being used was a steady 250k for about 30 seconds. As in something is limiting the bandwidth to get the list of files. I thought maybe something was wrong with the switch, so I tried to copy over some large files from the folder and it flew! So what I did next was went to a Windows 98 system they have and pulled the folder up and it puled a list of the files down in 2 seconds, and I went back and looked at my protocol analyzer on the server and it had spiked up to like 10MB when the 98 system got a list of the files. So at this point I know its not the server itself. Something on the XP workstation that is requesting the files is makin it limit it. So I was thinking it is an XP thing. But then I connected my Dell laptop with Dell's OEM load of Windows XP Pro SP1 and opened the shared folder and it also brought down a list of the files in like 2 seconds and I looked at the server and the network speed had spiked up like the 98 system. So it is nothing to do with the TCP/IP settings theirselves (which is the only protocol installed) because I can copy over files from system to system in no time. And there is no delay in accessing systems on the network. I have them all set up on static and have them all in lmhost files. I can pull all systems up very fast and all shares very fast. But there is some kind of bandwidth limitation when these new HP systems are getting a list of the files. Anybody have any idea??