I think that you are into a 'classic' problem area of windows networking.
There are many, many, many knowledge base articles offering help with
specific symptoms in specific applications versions.
Windows tries too hard to find and keep a good connection to a network
resource. And sometimes doesn't do it very well.
Good When they track down a specific instance (usually application,
sometimes OS, bug related) they usually fix it with a patch. So make sure
EVERYTHING, especially server applications, are as up to date and as fully
patched as you can stand.
Bad It's endemic, has roots back to 4.0, and if not a (patchable) bug
only ,usually means a mis-configuration in your setup somewhere (client,
server, application, service, domains, protocols.)
Simple example: an application is trying to access a network resource and
you get an unusual 10 second to 15 MINUTE+! delay (sometimes lockup). You
used to use Netware on your network and (some?) clients still have NetWare in
their protocol stack, but the well known NetWare resource is NOT available on
your network. If a client has NetWare on top of the protocol list some
accesses will wait for NetWare to respond with the resource availability
before trying another protocol. If nothing NetWare answers it may wait for a
timeout period before trying the next protocol. I have seen these timeouts
set by default to as much as 900 seconds.
More complicated example: anything to do with Webdav. Which includes
anything with Office 2000 or newer, and LOTS more Microsoft stuff. One
example of aligned problems with this is that some applications try to find
the BEST access method, so they try all of the ones they can find, and then
don't use any until ALL access methods try, respond or timeout! Often a 600
second timeout if you hit a DFS server resource running a web server not
properly configured to answer webdav resource requests.
More insideous example: Cached or saved references to a resource that is no
longer usable or is very sub-optimal. My worst experience; saved Macro
reference in a Word document family that pointed to a no longer existent
Netware share that had been replaced with a Windows Share of the same name
but with content in a different arrangement, partially. The delays &
timeouts! The weird error messages! The inconsistencies!
For the following –
THE MORE EXACT, COMPLETE, AND SPECIFIC THE SYMPTOMS COLLECTED THE BETTER!!!!
Some of this Microsoft network troubleshooters actually help solve. You
have to know enough facts to answer their questions well though.
Microsoft support can also usually run them down for me if all else fails.
It may not be fast! It may though be free if a patch fixes it.
The knowledge base has a lot of articles. Online search engines often give
better results. Google especially is often MUCH better at finding
appropriate Microsoft KB articles then TechNet or MSDN search is.
If anyone knows of a good central resource at Microsoft to use in these
cases I'd love to know about it though! (I have one, or maybe two ;-{ such
ongoing problems right now!)
