Very slow network

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I have some excessively slow networking in Windows 7. I thought at first it was one application (a payroll program), but I have reproduced the problem in Excel and Word.

The problem occurs when changing from one open file in the application to another. Firstly the File-Open dialog box takes around 45 seconds to appear. Then when I select a file to open the previous file takes another 45 seconds to close. When that has happened the new file opens at normal speed. As I have said, I have tried the same sequence of events in Excel and found it similarly sluggish.

The machine where the files are stored is a fast Windows 7 machine, and the client machine is a somewhat slower, although still reasonably fast, Windows 7 laptop. Win 7 Ultimate in both cases.

I have tried with the Homegroup enabled and disabled, with and without a mapped drive letter, and via Wifi or wired network with no appreciable difference between any of these scenarios. Opening files is always a perfectly acceptable speed if the file is opened from Explorer, or indeed once the file-Open dialog has finally opened.

This slow experience has only happened since Windows 7 – back in the old days when both ends were XP pro the speed was never an issue.

I have Googled many times for any hints and got nowhere. Hopefully I will have more luck here!

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Do you have networked or external drives defined that are not available/turned off/disconnected when the problem occurs?

Joe

--Joe

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No, the only networked drives are on the main machine and are available.

J

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What happens if you copy several of these files to the desktop of the client machine and then open in the same sequence?

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The performance is completely normal if the files are copied locally

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If you have disabled Homegroups, have you also disabled IPv6?

Joe

--Joe

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If you have disabled Homegroups, have you also disabled IPv6?

Joe

Good suggestion. I’m also wondering about the age of your router. If its a little older, I’d also suggest unplugging your router for 5 minutes and plugging it back in. Some older routers tend to get sluggish when they heat up, especially during or shortly after high rate data transfers.

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I don’t think the router is at fault in that way. For everything else the performance is normal.

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Just tried that – good thought but still no difference 🙁

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OK, that’s good to know. Process of elimination. Isn’t this fun? :rolleyes:

Have you disable A/V?

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No, I admit I haven’t disabled A/V. But then I didn’t go to bed with my front door open either 🙂

However, since this problem has been evident I have tried 3 different AV programs (not simultaneously I hasten to add) – AVG, Avira and MSE and all exactly the same.

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No, I didn’t mean that you might have a virus. Just the opposite. Turn off A/V to see if that’s effecting performance. Most, if not all A/V actively scans files when they are accessed. It can be particularly slow over a network connection. I usually disable the active scanning because of this. So long as you run periodic scans of the drives, this is usually sufficient. Especially if you are the creator of the files.

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Try opening the Network and Sharing Center. Click on Advanced Options. Scroll down to File Sharing Connections. Tic Enable File sharing for devices that use 40 or 50 bit encryption.

Jerry

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I had a similar issue with a slow laptop (albeit a “very fast” recent model ThinkPad fully loked with memory) running 32 bit Windows 7 Ultimate connected to a wired Ethernet LAN with various devices and OSs on the LAN. On the laptop I had Windows Firewall OFF and was running ZoneAlarm Suite (which I’ve used happily for years), with no other security applications running.

Because of slow performance I decided to uninstal ZoneAlarm Suite and use Windows Firewall and Microsoft Security Essential. Wow! Significant performance improvement.

Be wary of running other security software at the same time – running to many security applicatiosn at the same time is a sure recipe for a slow computer.

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Hi Woodworm. I think the clue is in the 45 seconds, it is a network access timeout, clearly to a resource you don’t need. If I’m right, I’m not 100% at diagnosing the exact problem but I have fixed it in many cases.

What is probably happening is that Windows (bless its little heart) is trying to be super helpful and find all your files for you even if they’re not there any more!

A prime candidate used to to be the Web Client service – that would try for 45 seconds to locate a missing folder on t’internet. Disabling the service cured the problem. In Win7 I see it is a manual startup by default so maybe won’t be the problem unless you see it is started on your PC (click start and search for “services”)

A common trigger is receiving a WORD document from an external source that used a template held on a network drive accessed by a UNC path – Windows tries to find the template on the web, when it fails it doesn’t worry you about it but the process takes 45 sec. Similarly once open it tries to access the template again on closing. I’ve had to tell people to copy the content to a new file in some cases.

I’ve also, specifically in Win7, seen issues with Windows indexing large folders (typically network shares). Local folders stay indexed unless on removeable drives, network ones don’t and they can be huge. If you get a green progress bar in the path box in My Computer when you open a folder that is the search indexer working away. The file/open box is basically a stripped down Explorer window and maybe it waits for the search to complete instead of letting you in straightaway. Searching of course may take any amount of time so I’m not pressing that idea.

Finally, if you are on a complicated network there may be redundant paths, one of which is preferred but dead. I once found that on a corporate network and tried in vain to persuade their IT gurus that was the problem – they just thought it was a long way to that office so it would be slow wouldn’t it! Eventually they agreed to bring in a network expert who spotted the problem in seconds. Again, probably not an issue with you

Overall, there must be a way of finding paths Windows searches by default that are not present. I don’t know how to do it, but if you can find one and kill the dead paths you should cure the problem.

Ian

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Hi Woodworm. I think the clue is in the 45 seconds, it is a network access timeout, clearly to a resource you don’t need. If I’m right, I’m not 100% at diagnosing the exact problem but I have fixed it in many cases.

What is probably happening is that Windows (bless its little heart) is trying to be super helpful and find all your files for you even if they’re not there any more!

A prime candidate used to to be the Web Client service – that would try for 45 seconds to locate a missing folder on t’internet. Disabling the service cured the problem. In Win7 I see it is a manual startup by default so maybe won’t be the problem unless you see it is started on your PC (click start and search for “services”)

A common trigger is receiving a WORD document from an external source that used a template held on a network drive accessed by a UNC path – Windows tries to find the template on the web, when it fails it doesn’t worry you about it but the process takes 45 sec. Similarly once open it tries to access the template again on closing. I’ve had to tell people to copy the content to a new file in some cases.

I’ve also, specifically in Win7, seen issues with Windows indexing large folders (typically network shares). Local folders stay indexed unless on removeable drives, network ones don’t and they can be huge. If you get a green progress bar in the path box in My Computer when you open a folder that is the search indexer working away. The file/open box is basically a stripped down Explorer window and maybe it waits for the search to complete instead of letting you in straightaway. Searching of course may take any amount of time so I’m not pressing that idea.

Finally, if you are on a complicated network there may be redundant paths, one of which is preferred but dead. I once found that on a corporate network and tried in vain to persuade their IT gurus that was the problem – they just thought it was a long way to that office so it would be slow wouldn’t it! Eventually they agreed to bring in a network expert who spotted the problem in seconds. Again, probably not an issue with you

Overall, there must be a way of finding paths Windows searches by default that are not present. I don’t know how to do it, but if you can find one and kill the dead paths you should cure the problem.

Ian

The bit about Windows trying to find the Word template on the Web – you can cure that (at least in Word 2010) by having Word inspect the document and then remove the document properties and metadata, and saving the document. It’s easier than copying the content to a new file.

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I had this very same problem and I posted it in the Microsoft Partner Support Forums. Another Microsoft partner commented he had the same issue and resolved it by going into the Internet Explorer Tools, Internet Options, Connections Tab, LAN Settings, and making sure the box is not checked for Automatically detect settings. I tried that and it worked. My clients have noticed a huge network performance increase even for non-Internet Explorer related programs. I hope this information helps. -Rich

Also of note a Microsoft tech responded by saying, “Internet Explorer supports a mechanism called Automatic Proxy Detection which implements the WPAD algorithm. This allows the browser to find a proxy server on the local network without any fixed configuration information on the client. Unfortunately, WPAD can be a very slow process, because it involves multiple network lookups, which may take a long time depending on the network configuration.

You may refer to the article below contains the section “Common Problems> Proxy Detection” maybe related to this specific issue.

“Unshackling IE8 Performance”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2009/07/20/ie8-performance-and-speed-tips.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

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Perhaps this information will be of some help:

Slow Windows 7 network – file transfers and backups from Win7 client PC on mixed Windows network take forever to Windows Home Server –

http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/Fix_Windows_7_Win7_Problems.htm#slowwin7

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How about the speed of copying documents from the network to your PC? I have trouble with Word/Excel/Access for files located on our network. But, if I first copy the files to my C drive, then my own local copy opens quickly and there are no “speed issues”. But copying a file off the network can take minutes, even though copying the same file from one folder located on my C drive to another folder located on my C drive is basically instantaneous.

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This is a good thread. I just wish there were some solutions here. I keep all my data on a Home Server. Often when accessing a file I see the same problem. Quickbooks and Quicken are exceedingly bad at accessing network files. I finally just copied them locally and back them up to the server. We were talking 2 minutes just to open the data file versus about 15 seconds locally. Here’s hoping some other good tips are posted.

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It sounds like Windows is trying to look for your files in a much larger area — the Internet is fairly large! Try disconnecting the WAN cable to your router, or disconnect the cable between your router and cable/DSL modem. Open your browser, confirm you have no Internet access (should see Page Not Found, or something similar). Now, try to access a file thru Excel or Word. If things are the same, your problem is likely local to your network (including your router) or your PC. If performance returned to normal, your system is likely looking to the Internet to find a file resource that is offline. Try this: Right-click “Command Prompt” (found in Accessories folder), choose “Run as administrator”, then OK to the prompt asking for permission to run this executable. In the black Command Prompt window, type ipconfig /flushdns and hit your Enter key. Try open a file again. If things are back to normal, connect your WAN cable, or reconnect cable between router & cable/DSL modem, open your browser to bring up your home page, then try to open a file thru Word or Excel. If performance is normal, your “DNS cache” could have been corrupted. If you are back to slow access, you may have a bad router or flaky DNS from your ISP, or your PC insists on going to the Internet to look for files/resources. This may point back to something on your router. like a bad routing table. Let us know what you find.

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It would really help if the problem could be fully laid out. Did it ever work well under Win7? If it did, what changed in the “environment”? Apart from OS what other differences exist today? If the issue is the time to load, have you used any tools to watch what resources are in play when the app is started or whatever you’re doing? You speak of opening a file, which i can only assume is remote. How are you finding it for the purpose of opening? Is this done via a search, or explicit means within the remote folder, or other means as there are many tests you can use to isolate the problem. Has any software changed as to configuration or even version? Others have pointed to the possibility of the network, especially TCP/IP timeout. That’s worth pursuing, especially if Windows resource or traces point in that direction. Gnarly stuff!

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I would create a new user account on the laptop and see if the problems persist. I haven’t worked with 7 much, but a new user account has cured similar problems for me in XP.

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