Mapped network drive in PATH causes delays

Question

I have a requirement to have locations on a network drive in my system Path (Windows XP SP3). If for whatever reason my connection to that drive is slow, this makes everything on my computer slow. What can I tweak on my system to lessen the impact of this setup?

Answer 1

You can try to map the target location by IP instead of by name - that might avoid the NetBIOS name lookup.

Alternatively, you could alter the LMHOSTS file to hardcode the IP for the name and alter the name provider search order to put LMHOSTS before the DHCP or domain advertised capability.

Also make sure that the target system responds to ICMP echo and ICMP time exceeded.

Unfortunately there is no way to get rid of delays entirely.

Answer 2

You could put it at the end, which would lessen the need for it to hit that path when searching (assuming it finds it earlier in the %PATH%).

Or, if you don't need the %PATH% when it's slow, you could redirect it to a bad location (like localhost) through the HOSTS file (you'll want something that gives connection refused or bad route - not a timeout).

But, the best option would probably be to re-evaluate why you need it in the %PATH%, and see if you can remove that dependency.

Answer 3

This is the nature of things .. searching a network location is slower than searching a "local" location.

1- If the network location is only used for a couple of things, you could take the network location out of the path and put it in the "Start in" section of a shortcut which is stored locally.

2- In the same vein, you could have shortcuts to batch files for the critical items that have change the path before and after running the critical item.

3- If the contents of that network location are small or don't change much, create a local location, put the local location in the path, and run a robocopy script on login or on the scheduler to sync the local location to the network location.

Good luck!