Slow respons in seeing workgroup computer

[Richard in AZ]

I am trying to help a friend with an odd network problem.
He has a custom built desktop running XP PRO and his wife has a HP Laptop running XP HE.
Both machines use AVG, Windows Defender and Windows Firewall.
Both machines are connected through a DLink Router with Ethernet cables.
Both machines can see each other, but,

Using Windows Explorer and "My Network Places" it takes the desktop 30 to 35 seconds to read and
display the Laptop Shared Folder. However the Laptop and read and display the Desktop Shared
Folder in less than 3 seconds.

I mapped the laptop shared folder as a drive on the desktop and now they can open the mapped drive
in 3 seconds, but what makes the access through My Network Places so slow?

The Desktop has a 2.2 GH AMD processor and 1 GB of RAM.
The Laptop has 512 MB of RAM and ?? cpu.

Any suggestions.

 

[D. Kirkpatrick]

Using Windows Explorer and "My Network Places" it takes the desktop 30 to 35
seconds to read and
display the Laptop Shared Folder. However the Laptop and read and display
the Desktop Shared
Folder in less than 3 seconds.

I mapped the laptop shared folder as a drive on the desktop and now they can
open the mapped drive
in 3 seconds, but what makes the access through My Network Places so slow?

The Desktop has a 2.2 GH AMD processor and 1 GB of RAM.
The Laptop has 512 MB of RAM and ?? cpu.

I have a similar issue with an XP. I have 2 W2K machines and they
come up fast and furious. I even have a Mac OS 9 system running their
special utility to talk to Windows systems and it is quite fast.

However when I try to view the shared folder of the XP on one of the
W2K machines it cranks away looking for everything.