HELP ME PLEASE! Very bad performance of file sharing

[Guest]

I have a new computer (let's call it SERVER) with WinXP Pro SP2 (Pentium D
3.2, 1GB of RAM, 100Mbit/s ethernet) which shares a folder in my network.
This folder contains approximately 5 000 - 10 000 files. Half of them are
images (JPEG) and the other ones are short description files in binary
format. These files occupy 2-3GB of storage space.

The problem is when I open this shared folder from the SERVER on my computer
it takes about 2-3 minutes to wait for displaying folder contents. My
computer is also WinXP Pro SP2 (a little slower than the server).

While shared folder contents are being read from the SERVER I observed:
- CPU usage on the SERVER is about 1-2%,
- Disk & memory usage is also at the very low level,
- CPU on my computer is about 2-4% used,
- Network utilization is at the level of 0,1-0,5% (!!!!!!!!)

When I installed the SERVER with the same share on Win2000 SP4, the problem
was exactly the same - low network load while reading the folder.

When I connected old Windows Millennium computer to the share on the SERVER
the same operation (reading folder contents) took only a few seconds!!!!!!!

My question is: what can I do (configure) to make reading that shared folder
in a few seconds, not in minutes??????

Please, help me!!!

Kind regards,
Michal

 

[CreateWindow]

Hi Michal,

I'm not sure what is going on here. You may like to download the *free*
Microsoft Network Monitor version 3.0 and load it on the XP PC.

Open Netmon and click on the Create New capture tab button. Push the "Play"
(record) button and have a look at the network traffic. After capturing 30
seconds worth of packets. Have a look for TCP errors or strange IP
behaviour.

I found a problem myself the other day doing just that. One of my Vista test
(MSDN) installations was taking an **obscenely long time** to enumerate a
network share. 1 minute!!! My Windows 2003 box opened the folder instantly.
I found the reason - a 1 GB zip file in the share root! Vista was
enumerating the files inside the ZIP file over the network and taking
forever. Yet another Vista feature that is mor like a bug!

I'm not saying that's your problem. I'm just suggesting that looking at the
actual traffic may help you and educate you on a bit of networking trickery
at the same time. ;-)
Have fun

CreateWindow
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[Chuck]

I have a new computer (let's call it SERVER) with WinXP Pro SP2 (Pentium D
3.2, 1GB of RAM, 100Mbit/s ethernet) which shares a folder in my network.
This folder contains approximately 5 000 - 10 000 files. Half of them are
images (JPEG) and the other ones are short description files in binary
format. These files occupy 2-3GB of storage space.

The problem is when I open this shared folder from the SERVER on my computer
it takes about 2-3 minutes to wait for displaying folder contents. My
computer is also WinXP Pro SP2 (a little slower than the server).

While shared folder contents are being read from the SERVER I observed:
- CPU usage on the SERVER is about 1-2%,
- Disk & memory usage is also at the very low level,
- CPU on my computer is about 2-4% used,
- Network utilization is at the level of 0,1-0,5% (!!!!!!!!)

When I installed the SERVER with the same share on Win2000 SP4, the problem
was exactly the same - low network load while reading the folder.

When I connected old Windows Millennium computer to the share on the SERVER
the same operation (reading folder contents) took only a few seconds!!!!!!!

My question is: what can I do (configure) to make reading that shared folder
in a few seconds, not in minutes??????

Please, help me!!!

Kind regards,
Michal

Michal,

Are there any other shares on the server, that you could use as a baseline test?
You could set one up, with no content, and make sure that the problem isn't
related to that one folder. "5,000 - 10,000 files" is a good size. Plus the
uncertainty there (50%) is kind of odd. Does it fluctuate that widely?

Beyond that, I'd look at the protocols used by both computers. Gratuitous
protocols (on either computer) will require timeout before file sharing works.
This is sort of what you are describing, though an extreme example.
<http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2005/05/fix-network-problems-but-clean-up.html>
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2005/05/fix-network-problems-but-clean-up.html

 

[Guest]

Hello,
I ran the Microsoft Network Monitor on both machines (Server and Client) and
saw nothing wrong. There were no TCP errors or other bad events while reading
folder contents from Server.

I also ran Process Monitor and File Monitor on both machines and everything
seems to fine. The server was almost totally idle with exception of
explorer.exe process which regularly queried some values from system
registry. File Monitor showed no activity (perhaps folder contents are read
by some kernel-level driver).
On the client File Monitor showed explorer.exe reading the folder. Network
load was about 0,45% of total bandwidth (100mbit/s).

I'm quite sure that it's not cable/switch/NIC problem. Copying large file
between the server and the client using the same network share uses 100% of
network bandwidth.

Also there are no ZIP files on the network share.

Next thing:
Network share contains JPG images. Suppose that I open one of them on the
client using IrfanView program. The picture loads immediately, but IrfanView
also reads the folder contents to show how many files in that folder it is
able to display. It is not making any previews or reading properties - just a
file list that it can handle. Reading the folder by IrfanView has exactly the
same problem that explorer.exe has - it takes about 2-3 minutes.

I wonder how it would be on Windows Server sharing the same folder. Would it
be the same story as is with XP Pro? However I cannot check this because I'm
not using Windows Server software.

Or maybe some performance tunning is needed (modifying some registry entries)?

I also wonder why Windows Millennium client reads the same network share
fast enough (a few seconds). Maybe it is not reading full file attributes
from the Server's NTFS filesystem, while Windows 2000 and XP does? But why
there is such a huge time difference between these systems???

So I'm still waiting for the solution...
Kind regards,
Michal

 

[Guest]

Another way to see the same problem:
I have opened Command Prompt on the client and ran "dir" command on the
network folder. It took exactly the same time to retrieve folder contents as
in cases described in earlier posts. But what I discovered is that folder
contents are read "in chunks". Dir command displays about 150 files, then
waits (?) about half a second, then next about 150 files, then waits again,
.....

When I selected all files in the network folder (about 6000 files) and
dragged them down to local folder, copying operated at about 1,7MB/s that is
about 14mbit/s of network transfer.