One computer has very slow network access

1

In my office, we have countless Windows workstations communicating with a server. We don't have a domain. All worstations and the server are in the same workgroup. All network connections are wired. We log into the server with a username and password different to that of the workstation.

One Windows XP workstation, just one in the office, takes up to 60 seconds to open a document on the server. If I save the document to the desktop and open it from there, it comes up instantly. If I use a similar workstation in the same room, the document opens from the server instantly.

Using Net Use \\Server\Share makes no difference. IP addresses and DNS are DHCP assigned and no conflicts are detected.

I am at a complete loss as to what the issue could be. It just occured to me that AVG is running and I'll investigate that. Do you have any other ideas?

Hand-E-Food

Posted 2011-10-10T01:01:22.300

Reputation: 4 711

My instinct is that there's something wrong with name resolution or routing on that machine. You may get more useful advices on serverfault though. – billc.cn – 2011-10-10T01:08:02.473

We had a lot of DNS issues recently which were fixed by reconfiguring the server. It could very well be related to that, but how could one workstation not receive the benefits gained from a server configuration? I've confirmed the workstation is using the correct DHCP and DNS server. – Hand-E-Food – 2011-10-10T03:39:43.897

Could you ping your server from that workstation using the server name you used to access the share and see what is the IP address ping uses by default. It may be an unexpected one. – billc.cn – 2011-10-10T13:37:47.397

Answers

1

A couple things you can look for:

  • Make sure you're connecting at full speed — either 100FD or 1000FD, not 10HD, 10FD, or 100HD*
  • If you have a managed switch, log in and look at the port this computer is using and look for it to report packet errors.

* The HD vs FD is half-duplex vs full-duplex

Joel Coehoorn

Posted 2011-10-10T01:01:22.300

Reputation: 26 787

Thanks for that! The network card has its Speed & Duplex set to Auto and reports at 1.0 Gbps. The switch is not managed. I tried plugging into a different port with a different cable (known to work) and there was no difference. – Hand-E-Food – 2011-10-10T03:36:59.627

Asked: 2011-10-10T01:01:22.300

Viewed: 1 322 times

Active: 2011-10-10T01:24:46.250