Vista Very Slow to Access 2003 Server

[Bill Orr]

Greetings,

Our layout:

3 Vista computers with all available updates. All are different hardware.
2 are Business Edition and 1 is Ultimate. All are domain members.
5 Windows XP Professional computers. All are domain members.
5 Windows 2003 R2 Servers. SP2 and all available updates are installed. 2
of these servers are 64-bit. All are identical hardware.
Single Windows domain. Single LAN. Single network. Very simple flat
environment.


The patch 931770 has been applied to all the Vista computers.

Problem:
Recently, 2 days ago, the Windows Vista computers began having problems
accessing one of our Windows 2003 R2 64-bit servers over the network. All
forms of access to only this server from only the Vista workstations are
very sluggish. Displaying the contents of a shared folder takes 20 - 30
seconds. Copying files is nearly impossible. This is our Exchange 2007
server (rollup 4) and Outlook can take 5 - 10 minutes to open any mailbox
and 30 - 60 seconds to change active messages. RDP to this server and only
this server is very sluggish, there are long pauses when working within the
RDP session.

No changes occurred around this time frame. I've checked for updates that
were installed which may have cause the problem and no patches were
installed at this time. The environment has been working in this
configuration for 2 weeks without issue since the last round of patches were
installed. This happened suddenly and for all Vista computers at the same
time. Access to all other servers, running the same version of Windows on
the same hardware is normal. Access to this particular server from all
Windows XP computers is also normal.

The problem seems to exist only between the Vista computers and one
particular server. There are no errors on either the server or the
workstations.

I have changed network card settings, tried a different switch, applied the
patch mentioned above, reviewed all logs for errors, disabled the Windows
firewall and antivirus on the Vista computers and the server, and cannot
seem to identify what triggered this behavior.

Anyone else seen this?

Thank you,

Bill

 

[Kerry Brown]

This is a stab in the dark but I've seen similar slow downs when Vista has a
problem with DNS resolving a server name and has to use NETBIOS. What are
the results of nslookup of the server from one of the affected Vista
clients?

 

[Bill Orr]

Thanks for the reply Kerry,

NSLookup returns the correct address. I double-checked the IP settings on
the DNS server and the server we're having problems talking to from Vista.
I double-checked the DNS server I'm handing out in DHCP to the clients. The
host records in the DNS table are correct and corresponding PTRs exist for
the server and the clients.

Keep 'em coming!

Thank you,

Bill

 

[Kerry Brown]

Something here may help.

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...s+2003+sp2+slow&rnum=1&hl=en#85e2561543d0b3e3

 

[Bill Orr]

Well I'll be...

Yep, start the firewall service and then turn off the firewall... that did
it.

Thank you very much Kerry.

Bill

 

[Kerry Brown]

Well I'll be...

Yep, start the firewall service and then turn off the firewall... that did
it.

Thank you very much Kerry.

You're welcome. From reading that thread it may be a temporary fix. Someone
in the thread reported that after every reboot they had to repeat this. By
chance are you using a Broadcom NIC on that server? There have been a lot of
reports of problems with Server 2003 SP2 and Broadcom NICs that a driver
update fixes.