Slow response when browsing network files...

[Ben_j]

Both my PCs have Windows 7, and are plugged in Gigabit Ethernet. Still, almost everytime I want to access a remote folder, or unzip something, 9/10 times I have to wait 30s for the other computer to respond, like it was locked or something... Is there any way to make this better ? It's f**king annoying

[cluberti]

Hard to say, until we know what's happening. Are the machines in a homegroup? Do you happen to have a network trace from both machines simultaneously while the delay is occurring, perchance? It'd be really beneficial to see what was happening over the wire on both the host machine and the requester at the time of the delay.

[Ben_j]

Yes they're in a homegroup. The server is an Atom 330 with 2GB of RAM by the way.

It happens mostly with stuff that I just created on the other computer from this computer (like, with a freshly downloaded file that I want to open)

I could use Wireshark to trace what's happening

[cluberti]

That'd be great - the only thing I'd caution is if the file is executable, the delay is probably checking the file stream. A wireshark would show us though.

[Ben_j]

I can give you a wireshark trace of when I unzip a file that is on the remote computer (unziping to the remote computer, not to the local computer) with a filter on SMB2 protocol. Would that be enough ?

EDIT :

http://benji.ng.free.fr/bad.zip

I unzipped in an empty directory, no problem, and then in a directory with a lot of files (that's the trace) and it got stuck like a dozen times (you can see by looking at the time column where it got stuck). Almost every time there's the "Error : Unknown (0xc2ca00c0)" line right before the unzipping freezes

EDIT bis :

Precision : I have a shared folder mounted as a drive. All the problems happen when I browse this drive.

I just tried to do a lot of stuff by accessing directly the folder on the network instead of the network drive (unzipping, playing an MP3, openning a heavy PDF, launching an exe...) and it seemed to work like a charm... So why would it be like that whit the folder mounted ?

Edited June 20, 2010 by Ben_j

[cluberti]

I unzipped in an empty directory, no problem, and then in a directory with a lot of files (that's the trace) and it got stuck like a dozen times (you can see by looking at the time column where it got stuck). Almost every time there's the "Error : Unknown (0xc2ca00c0)" line right before the unzipping freezes

  ERROR_EXE_MARKED_INVALID                                      winerror.h
# The operating system cannot run %1.

EDIT bis :

Precision : I have a shared folder mounted as a drive. All the problems happen when I browse this drive.

I just tried to do a lot of stuff by accessing directly the folder on the network instead of the network drive (unzipping, playing an MP3, openning a heavy PDF, launching an exe...) and it seemed to work like a charm... So why would it be like that whit the folder mounted ?

I notice that the delays are a specific set of files:

SQLEXPR_X64_FRA.EXE - 11 seconds

SQLManagementStudio_x64_FRA.exe - 9 seconds

1-05 Horse Power.m4a (this one causes an auth request/handshake, a tree disconnect, and then a reconnect and re-auth for some reason) - 114 seconds

1-09 Don't Think (Bonus Track).m4a - 36 seconds

It looks like all 4 files have metadata, which could be the problem - however, I noticed at the end there were SMB2_FILE_NETWORK_OPEN_INFO requests, once the files appeared to have been written. At this point, I'm not entirely certain it's a network issue. You might want to watch this happening on the system that's accepting the files with procmon to see what's happening at the filesystem level. I'm wondering if it's unable to parse the metadata to see if the files are "safe" or not, perhaps? This is a little odd.

[Ben_j]

Hm, maybe. If I close the bottom panel with all the file infos, do you think it will help ? Windows won't try to parse the metadata ?

[cluberti]

Not sure, honestly. A Procmon might tell you more, but I think the metadata is part of the SMB2 lookup (it's in the filestream that's being copied).

[Tripredacus]

Just for fun, you could try disabling the Link Layer Topology Mapper and Scanner options in each NIC's properties. If this doesn't make any changes, you can re-enable it. I had to do this on our network if a Vista machine decided to show up, but my network copying issues ceased once I had a Server 2008 Domain Controller because it could respond to the clients with those services enabled. Before having that server, those clients would just keep flooding the network with packets, continually trying to map the network. This might be why Windows 7 has network discovery off by default.

Just an idea.