highly unreliable connection to network storage drives

[Peter]

Until yesterday network consisted of 5 PC's (3 running XP Pro, 1 XP Home - a
little netbook, and 1 Vista Home Ultimate). 3 of the PC's connect via
wireless, 2 by ethernet. Internet connection is via ADSL2 and the modem acts
as the router.

Other things on network include a Print Server and a Buffalo LinkStation
Mini network storage.

Until yesterday everything working fine - all PC's could print through print
server and all could see and use shared drives on the network storage.

Yesterday added new laptop (Acer Aspire) running Vista Home Premium which is
connecting by wireless. Have put it into same Workgroup as everything else
and everything working fine EXCEPT it really doesn't like communicating with
the Buffalo LinkStation.

It can see the LinkStation (called SharedDrive) and I mapped three drives by
IP Address and name (eg \\192.168.1.67\Photos). It seemed to be very slow
displaying the contents of those drives but eventually they show up in
Computer.

But when I double click one the window opens with the little circle thing
going round and round; after a long delay it shows the directories and files
in the drive but that round thing keeps going round and eventually Windows
Explorer stops responding.

I can connect to other PCs on the network and copy files - and performance
is quite acceptable.

I have tried turning off McAffee firewall and iPv6 - to no avail.

Any ideas?

 

[Robert L. \(MS-MVP\)]

You may try to disable auto tuning for a test. These search results may
help.
a.. Vista Slow Issues
Disable the automatic adjustment (Auto Tuning) for the TCP window size
on the network. To do this, follow these steps: Click Start , type cmd and
press ...
www.chicagotech.net/vista/vistaslow.htm - Similar pages

a.. Troubleshooting Vista connectivity issues
Cause and Solution: By default, the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature
in ... This command enables Receive Window Auto-Tuning again so that you can
take ...
www.chicagotech.net/netissues/vistaconnectivity1.htm


--
Bob Lin, MS-MVP, MCSE & CNE
Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Troubleshooting on
http://www.ChicagoTech.net
How to Setup Windows, Network, VPN & Remote Access on
http://www.HowToNetworking.com

 

[Peter]

Robert,

Thanks for that suggestion, but:

at command prompt entered netsh interface tcp set global
autotuninglevel=disabled and got a reply:

Set global command failed on IPv$ The requested operation requires elevation.

I tried lifting the machine to a higher elevation - but nothing changed!

Does anyone know what this means.

I have put the latest formware on the Buffalo - but problem persists.

Accessing other PCs on the network is problem free!

Peter