Slow network file access

[Mark]

I am having difficulties on our network with files
accessing slowly from a network share.

I searched around for some ideas and came across some
hotfixes by microsoft (mrxsmb.sys, rdbss.dll, etc) but all
my files are newer than the hotfixes listed, so they are
not the problem.

Network description:
20 computers in this building
Windows 2k Pro - some SP2, some SP4 (SP4 on this machine
and still have slow access times)
these files are NOT compressed or encrypted, so it
shouldn't be a result of that

The main file I work with is a 750KB Excel file, but even
much smaller files have excessive load times. It just
took me approx the same amount of time to open a 23KB file
as it does my 750KB file(anywhere from 8-12 seconds).

Any advice would be welcomed

 

[Dennis van der Meer]

Instead of searching for a problem on the clients, have you looked at
the server? What is the load on the server? Also a virusscanner on the
client might be causing problems.

 

[Mark]

Thanks. Turns out it likely is the server itself. It's
only a Pentium 3 with 512MB RAM. Not something I figure
could handle 20-30 logins/accesses. I'm recommending a
RAM upgrade to my boss and we'll see how things go from
there.