My Network Places slower than Drive Letter

[Guest]

Hello,

Since persuading our users to use the "My Network Places" instead of Drive
Letters (as the alfabet is rather limited) they report that this is slower
than accessing their files from shares mapped to drive letters.

This is especially noticable over slow connections (like VPN or remote
offices)

What is the cause and can this be solved?

Kind regards,

Hans Hinnekint
IT Operations Manager
Bekaert

 

[Robert L [MVP - Networking]]

This troubleshooting may help,
Slow to Browse My Network Places Slow to browse My Network Places Issue. Use fewer protocols or NICs on a computer. More protocols and NICs, it takes longer time to browse. ...
www.chicagotech.net/troubleshooting/slowissue1.htm


Windows slow issues Slow to open Windows explorer Slow to open a file or browse because of mapping to disconnected drive · Slow to browse My Network Places Issue ...
www.chicagotech.net/winslow.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
Hello,

Since persuading our users to use the "My Network Places" instead of Drive
Letters (as the alfabet is rather limited) they report that this is slower
than accessing their files from shares mapped to drive letters.

This is especially noticable over slow connections (like VPN or remote
offices)

What is the cause and can this be solved?

Kind regards,

Hans Hinnekint
IT Operations Manager
Bekaert

 

[Guest]

Hello Robert,

I deleted all unreachable and unneccessary locations and it still is slower
than using drive letters.

NetBIOS settings are coming from the DHCP server and the Computer Browser
services are stopped on our XP sp2 stations

Kind regards,

Hans

 

[Chuck]

Hello,

Since persuading our users to use the "My Network Places" instead of Drive
Letters (as the alfabet is rather limited) they report that this is slower
than accessing their files from shares mapped to drive letters.

This is especially noticable over slow connections (like VPN or remote
offices)

What is the cause and can this be solved?

Kind regards,

Hans Hinnekint
IT Operations Manager
Bekaert

Hans,

Do you have a domain with computers running only Windows 2000 / XP / 2003? If
so, are you using DNS for name resolution?
<http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2005/05/windows-xp-on-nt-domain.html>
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2005/05/windows-xp-on-nt-domain.html

If you're using DNS only (no NetBT involved), then you should disable NetBT
completely, and use directly hosted SMBs.
<http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/07/advanced-windows-networking-using.html>
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/07/advanced-windows-networking-using.html

And make sure that you don't have any excessive protocols or transports in any
computers.
<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

 

[Robert L [MVP - Networking]]

Can you post the result of browstat.exe?

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
Hello Robert,

I deleted all unreachable and unneccessary locations and it still is slower
than using drive letters.

NetBIOS settings are coming from the DHCP server and the Computer Browser
services are stopped on our XP sp2 stations

Kind regards,

Hans

 

[Guest]

An aside, but IMLI using UNC shares directly is a Bad Idea, and will get you
into major difficulty come upgrade-time.

Reason is that if a program accesses \\server\share\folder\file directly,
then you CANNOT CHANGE the name of ANY of those components without causing
major disruption to the network. Exactly how much disruption you won't know
either, as there is no way of telling how many programs have written this
path to obscure registry-entries.

So, effectively you 'lock yourself in' to the existing network setup. If
you want to replace an ageing server with a new one.. you can't unless it's
an identical and instant swap-out. If a disk is full, you can't move the
share to another server. And so on. None of these problems affect
driveletter-shares, since they can be remapped as required.

 

[Guest]

Hello Ian,

We are aware of this and for the moment use DNS aliasses to handle this.
In the future, we aould move to DFS to solve this, but first need to solve
the speed issues.

Thanks anyway,

Hans

 

[Guest]

Hello Chuck,

Indeed we have a Windows 2003 Native domain.

Both DNS and WINS are used, we receive the setting from DHCP.

I will disable it and check the effects.

Kind regards,

Hans

 

[Chuck]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 06:53:02 -0700, Hans Hinnekint

Hans,

Disable and check carefully. You have to setup the domain precisely, or you end
up with no access.