locksup when pulling file from share

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Guest

We're running a windows 2K network with XP workstations. Most of those
machines are running Office XP with a small number of users running Office
2003. When you open up a share drive (home) and select a powerpoint
presentation. It launches powerpoint and then just sits there. If you open
up task manager it has powerpoint listed twice (not responding) It takes
forever to kill the app. The next time you try to open the app it states
that it did not open properly, would you like to start in safemode. Off of
the share it does not work for anybody. If you copy that same file from the
share drive to the local machine and open it, it opens right up. This issue
does not happen with any other type of file ie word, excel or access just
powerpoint
 
Glen I appreciate your time with this but that seems to be the concensus.
Everyone keeps pointing to that link and it doesn't address my issue. It
does state that Powerpoint doesn't work well across networks especially
non-MS networks but it doesn't explain why. We have been able to pull
powerpoint files from the share drive plenty of times before without a hitch.
Glen thanks again
 
Hi,

Ah. There is a history. I'll dig deeper and get back to you.

--

Regards,

Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
www.powerpointworkbench.com
Australia

Please tell us your PowerPoint version,
whether you are using vba,
whether your dog has fleas, or
anything else relevant.
 
Hi,

Do you have Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition installed?

Is it possible that there are Networked drives that are offline? I know that
if you try to save to a network and it takes ages, Windows can be trying to
reconnect to drives that have been offline. Anyway, the truth is out there.

--

Regards,

Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
www.powerpointworkbench.com
Australia

Please tell us your PowerPoint version,
whether you are using vba,
whether your dog has fleas, or
anything else relevant.
 
Phinsn98 said:
We're running a windows 2K network with XP workstations. Most of those
machines are running Office XP with a small number of users running Office
2003. When you open up a share drive (home) and select a powerpoint
presentation. It launches powerpoint and then just sits there. If you open
up task manager it has powerpoint listed twice (not responding) It takes
forever to kill the app. The next time you try to open the app it states
that it did not open properly, would you like to start in safemode. Off of
the share it does not work for anybody. If you copy that same file from the
share drive to the local machine and open it, it opens right up. This issue
does not happen with any other type of file ie word, excel or access just
powerpoint
Click to expand...

Is there any pattern to which versions of PPT have this problem, or do they
all?

By "Windows 2k network" do you mean the shares are on a Windows 2K Server? How
heavily loaded is it? Can you do the same test when only a few users are
logged in?

What's meant by "share drive (home)"?

I ask because I open files using several computers running Win2k, XP/Home,
XP/Pro and MacOSX, several versions of PowerPoint, from shares on a Win2K
Server box. No similar problems to what you describe.

Possible differences:

- VERY lightly loaded network. It's just me and however many computers I can
drive with two hands and feet.

- I'm using mapped drives

- I religiously avoid creating folders and share names with spaces or odd
punctuation in their names.
 
For the sake of not missing any of your questions I've posted them up high
and I'll answer them one by one.

Is there any pattern to which versions of PPT have this problem, or do they
all?
Click to expand...

No this same issue is happening with Office XP as well as Office 2003
By "Windows 2k network" do you mean the shares are on a Windows 2K Server?
Click to expand...

That is correct

How
heavily loaded is it? Can you do the same test when only a few users are
logged in?
Click to expand...

It makes absolutely no difference. I stayed late last night to run that
exact test Powerpoint hung.
What's meant by "share drive (home)"?
Click to expand...
The users have a mapped drive called their H drive. We tell all users to
save their most important information on the H drive. This H drive actually
resides on the D: drive of the ADS in what is called the users directory.
Every user has their own folder within that directory.

FYI: We use scriptlogic for mapping the share drives for all users and we
use synchronization for the MY DOCUMENTS directory at the end of every day
(when they shut down)
 
What happens if you open PowerPoint first and then load the file?
Are your drives mapped?
Are you opening the file from Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer?

Take a look at:
Creating a Shared Repository or Workspace on the Cheap
http://www.powerpointmagician.com/articles/repository.htm

I've pulled files from both a (W2K) share and the web without problems.

Glenna
 
A couple more questions:
What are the XP firewall settings? Do you have a non-XP workstation that
you can try? Does the presentation contain any macros?

Glenna
 
The users have a mapped drive called their H drive. We tell all users to
save their most important information on the H drive. This H drive actually
resides on the D: drive of the ADS in what is called the users directory.
Every user has their own folder within that directory.

FYI: We use scriptlogic for mapping the share drives for all users and we
use synchronization for the MY DOCUMENTS directory at the end of every day
(when they shut down)
Click to expand...
Dang. I think we might work for the same place. We certainly have the same
network setup. ;-)

G
 
Doesn't make a difference how you open it across the share. It just hangs.
If you copy the file to the desktop from the share the file will open right
up. The drives are mapped via scriptlogic.

Thanks for the link and by the way we're a Dell shop too
 
For the sake of not missing any of your questions I've posted them up high
and I'll answer them one by one.
Click to expand...

Thanks ... and I've summarized to save space:

Office XP and 2003, no difference
Win2K server, problem appears even when lightly loaded
Mapped drives

So far, same as here, so we dig further to learn what's different:

But first, pardon what may be a silly question, but what's an ADS? Advanced
Directory Services? If so, that's not in use here. Possibly significant.

Here, I use a shared folder called P-Drive that the computers map to as P:
I can't imagine that the drive letter is significant; occasionally share names can
be a problem, ISTR, when they're too long/include odd characters. That's worth
checking.

Also, what network protocol are you using? WinXP has only a grudging ability to
deal with NETBEUI. When we switched to TCP/IP I ran into problems with the server
timing me out and disconnecting resources like shared drives. Also worth checking,
though if you can browse to the file on the share in Win Explorer, it seems unlikely
that you've been timed out. ;-)
 
Can you navigate (Explorer) through the network to the file and open?
Bypass the share setup....eliminate that part of the signal flow to test.
....................TD
 
I created a shared folder on the root of the ADS and mapped to it. I put a
powerpoint presentation in the folder that typically does not work. I
rebooted my pc accessed the share from "MY Computer" and it stated that the
file was damaged from being closed improperly would you like to repair it.
It looked like the Office XP was trying to install again (maybe just
repairing the file) once it was finished I clicked on the file and it opened
right up. The odd thing is that I stll cannot open up any powerpoint files
from the users share.
 
My apologies....I don't believe my question was clear.
Can you simply navigate, using Windows Explorer, to the system
that has the PowerPoint files and open? This method bypasses any
mapping or other share setup besides the simple folder share on the
host system.

...................TD
 
Sorry...I understood what you meant but I could not browse to the path via
explorer. Along with the Powerpoint issue I've been seeing some oddities
with my admin rights. I did not want to delute the issue with this. After
spending sometime on the phone with about seven different reps at Microsoft
on this issue it turns out that for some reason (bad update maybe) Symantec
Corporate on the ADS was causing the issue. If you stop and disable the
service and reboot the powerpoint files on the shares come right up. Now we
need to figure out what it is about Symantec that might be causing this issue.
 
This might be best reserved for a new post BUT to maintain the flow of it I
figured I'd ask here. Does anyone know why Symantec Corporate AV 8.0 would
cause the powerpoint files on a share to hang. If we disable the RTVSCAN
service on the ADS box the files pull up fine from the ADS if it's enabled
the app will just hang.

thanks
 
Phinsn98 said:
This might be best reserved for a new post BUT to maintain the flow of it I
figured I'd ask here. Does anyone know why Symantec Corporate AV 8.0 would
cause the powerpoint files on a share to hang. If we disable the RTVSCAN
service on the ADS box the files pull up fine from the ADS if it's enabled
the app will just hang.
Click to expand...

Keeping it together in the same thread is fine, I think. And thanks for posting
back with your discovery. FWIW, it's not uncommon for AV apps to cause
problems with PPT when they have some kind of "office plug-in" active.

See if it's possible to disable just the office scanning portion of the app w/o
turning it off altogether.
 
The issue re-occurred today. We contacted Symantec and they had us create
an exclusion for the ppt extension. We weren't happy about it but it seemed
to let us open up the files from the share. But then we started seeing
issues with Excel. We decided to unstall the server client for Symantec and
then re-install it again (bad update maybe) So far so good. I'll be testing
it over the weekend remotely just to see how we hold up. Hope this helps
someone.
 
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