XP file sharing when computer offline

[Mark Mc Gilly]

Hello,

Have a network of WinXP machines. One acts as a server with the others
constantly trying to copy files onto it. When the shared drive on the server
is unavailable the other PCs grind to a halt. CPU usage goes up to 100% and
the specialist software that does all the copying becomes unresponsive.

This is bad news because from time to time the server will be unavailable
due to hardware or software issues and the clients still need to work as if
nothing has changed. All the files will be polled up to the server when it
becomes available again anyway.

Any ideas as to how to change this behaviour?

Cheers,
Mark

 

[Chuck]

Hello,

Have a network of WinXP machines. One acts as a server with the others
constantly trying to copy files onto it. When the shared drive on the server
is unavailable the other PCs grind to a halt. CPU usage goes up to 100% and
the specialist software that does all the copying becomes unresponsive.

This is bad news because from time to time the server will be unavailable
due to hardware or software issues and the clients still need to work as if
nothing has changed. All the files will be polled up to the server when it
becomes available again anyway.

Any ideas as to how to change this behaviour?

Cheers,
Mark

Mark,

What is this "specialist software that does all the copying"? Are there any
other programs that show this symptom too?

--
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck sonic net.

 

[Mark Mc Gilly]

All computers are XP Pro. Server PC has file share and a database accessed
over the network.
The way I see it, the problem isn't so much with the server or client
software as to the way Windows handles the unavailable network share.
The test I ran using XP Pro and NT4 (both as server and client) involved
mapping a drive, copying a file and then reading it back. When the server
was made

unavailable eg remove network cable, switch off etc, the client CPU
utilisation shot up to 100% and stayed there. Used folowing batch file

net use z: \\server\share
:start
copy test.txt z:
type z:\test.txt
goto start
:end

Which is a reasonable simulation of what happens.
Same software does not cause any problems when running on Win9x but moved
over to XP and unusable when the share is unavailable.
Error log on NT4 comes back with 3013 Rdr The redirector has timed out a
request to server.

Any further thoughts?

Mark