Our office just purchased some new Win2k workstations... SP2 is installed.

They are also running the lastest Novell client (4.8) with the latest Novell Service 
Pack. 

The machines are very fast on the network, but there is often a 10 to 20 second pause 
whenever you use the "Open File" option from any program. The pause comes when you 
drop down the "Look In" list that shows you all of your drive letters and network 
options. Finally the list appears, and you can browse mapped network drives without 
any slowness or pauses whatsoever. 

The pause only seems to happen after you have not used your network  drives for awhile. 
We have NT 4.0 workstations running the same Novell client without any problems. 
It only affects Win2000. It happens on all of our machines....Dell, IBM, etc.

We tried disabling the computer browsing service, and setting IPX as preferred protocol 
for the Novell client. I also disabled offline folders. I even disabled realtime 
virus protection. Nothing has helped. 

Neither Novell nor Microsoft acknowledge this problem, but the Novell client seems 
to work fine with NT 4. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Sean

Tip: Run a free scan for common Windows errors ad

re: Slow Friday, August 17, 2001 at 6:11 am Posted by Curt R (1315 messages posted) I have noticed a few instances where 2000 seems to do certain actions a little slower than NT 4.0. This may be one of those situations. I'll ask around a bit and see if I can't come up with some actual helpful advice but don't hold your breath. On Thursday, August 16, 2001 at 4:24 pm, Sean wrote: >Our office just purchased some new Win2k workstations... SP2 is installed. > >They are also running the lastest Novell client (4.8) with the latest Novell Service >Pack. > >The machines are very fast on the network, but there is often a 10 to 20 second pause >whenever you use the "Open File" option from any program. The pause comes when you >drop down the "Look In" list that shows you all of your drive letters and network >options. Finally the list appears, and you can browse mapped network drives without >any slowness or pauses whatsoever. > >The pause only seems to happen after you have not used your network drives for awhile. >We have NT 4.0 workstations running the same Novell client without any problems. >It only affects Win2000. It happens on all of our machines....Dell, IBM, etc. > >We tried disabling the computer browsing service, and setting IPX as preferred protocol >for the Novell client. I also disabled offline folders. I even disabled realtime >virus protection. Nothing has helped. > >Neither Novell nor Microsoft acknowledge this problem, but the Novell client seems >to work fine with NT 4. > >Any suggestions? > >Thanks, > >Sean [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am Posted by Chris Boes (1 messages posted) Sean, A few of us in the office here recently had that problem on Win2000 machines. Here is what we found and how we fixed it. When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! Good Luck, -cb On Thursday, August 16, 2001 at 4:24 pm, Sean wrote: >Our office just purchased some new Win2k workstations... SP2 is installed. > >They are also running the lastest Novell client (4.8) with the latest Novell Service >Pack. > >The machines are very fast on the network, but there is often a 10 to 20 second pause >whenever you use the "Open File" option from any program. The pause comes when you >drop down the "Look In" list that shows you all of your drive letters and network >options. Finally the list appears, and you can browse mapped network drives without >any slowness or pauses whatsoever. > >The pause only seems to happen after you have not used your network drives for awhile. >We have NT 4.0 workstations running the same Novell client without any problems. >It only affects Win2000. It happens on all of our machines....Dell, IBM, etc. > >We tried disabling the computer browsing service, and setting IPX as preferred protocol >for the Novell client. I also disabled offline folders. I even disabled realtime >virus protection. Nothing has helped. > >Neither Novell nor Microsoft acknowledge this problem, but the Novell client seems >to work fine with NT 4. > >Any suggestions? > >Thanks, > >Sean [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, October 1, 2002 at 12:01 pm Posted by Rajesh Kumar (1 messages posted) Terrific, It worked for me. Thanks a lot. Raj On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: >Sean, > >A few of us in the office here recently had that problem on Win2000 machines. Here >is what we found and how we fixed it. > >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network >shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network >share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start >button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network >share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that >take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, >disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). >After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! > >Good Luck, >-cb > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Wednesday, November 6, 2002 at 4:34 pm Posted by David Hyre (2 messages posted) I had the same problem in WinXP/SP1 + OfficeXP/SP2. After finding Chris' post, I deleted my inactive mapped network drives, and BINGO, the drop down was instantly much faster. Thanks so much! BTW, the right-click test didn't work to find offending drives in WinXP - all were fast. I just deleted them all, since recent ones are retained under "My Network Places" and don't slow things down like the mapped drives. David On Nov 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: >Here is what we found and how we fixed it. >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows > tries to ckeck out all your network shares before > dropping down... > After we disconnected the offending share, > everything ran lickidy-split again! [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, January 7, 2003 at 3:08 pm Posted by screen (1 messages posted) This is a good solution but how would you handle, for instance, a mobile user with constantly changing drive mappings. This is absolutely driving me insane!!!! On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: >Sean, > >A few of us in the office here recently had that problem on Win2000 machines. Here >is what we found and how we fixed it. > >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network >shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network >share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start >button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network >share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that >take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, >disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). >After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! > >Good Luck, >-cb > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Thursday, February 27, 2003 at 8:12 am Posted by Matthew (1 messages posted) Did you ever figure this out? I am having the same problem -- I'm a mobile user with shares for each location from which I work -- and because there's always something "unavailable" it is TERRIBLY slow. Thanks! On Tuesday, January 7, 2003 at 3:08 pm, screen wrote: >This is a good solution but how would you handle, for instance, a mobile user with >constantly changing drive mappings. This is absolutely driving me insane!!!! > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 1:56 pm Posted by Roland (1 messages posted) Thx ! Chris`tip worked also for me (WinXp) +office xp. Bye bye mapped drives :( On Wednesday, November 6, 2002 at 4:34 pm, David Hyre wrote: > I had the same problem in WinXP/SP1 + OfficeXP/SP2. After finding Chris' post, >I deleted my inactive mapped network drives, and BINGO, the drop down was instantly >much faster. Thanks so much! > > BTW, the right-click test didn't work to find offending drives in WinXP - all >were fast. I just deleted them all, since recent ones are retained under "My Network >Places" and don't slow things down like the mapped drives. > >David > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 2:31 pm Posted by David Hyre (2 messages posted) At least in Windows XP (SP1), recently-connected drives are retained like "Recent Documents" under 'My Network Places' in Windows Explorer. These don't get (re-)connected until you click on them, and when unconnected they don't show up as in drop-down file lists so they don't slow things down like a mapped drive. It looks like they are just folder shortcuts pointing to "\\netmachine\my_shared_dir"; haven't tried building one manually that way. To connect the first time (or if it drops off the list), you can do a "Search / for computer" for the name of the computer hosting the drive to which you want to connect. Then Windows will retain the link / shortcut for a while. Let us know if you experiment with making the connections more permanent! Good luck. On Thursday, February 27, 2003 at 8:12 am, Matthew wrote: >Did you ever figure this out? I am having the same problem -- I'm a mobile user >with shares for each location from which I work -- and because there's always something >"unavailable" it is TERRIBLY slow. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 3:49 pm Posted by Jeremy (2 messages posted) Thanks Chris...that worked for me as well. My manager was having this problem on his machine. He had two mappped drives that were no longer active. Once I disconnected them, the "Look In" drop down menu sped right up. I about pulled my hair out trying to resolve that one. I did a little searching and found your thread.....Thanks again sir! On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: >Sean, > >A few of us in the office here recently had that problem on Win2000 machines. Here >is what we found and how we fixed it. > >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network >shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network >share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start >button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network >share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that >take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, >disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). >After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! > >Good Luck, >-cb > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Saturday, March 15, 2003 at 3:41 pm Posted by Ian Lazerwitz (1 messages posted) I think this is a semi-viable solution but I think there has got to be a time out value in the registry that will allow it to time out while checking these mapped drives. I am toying with the idea of opening an incident with M$ support. On Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 3:49 pm, Jeremy Springer wrote: >Thanks Chris...that worked for me as well. My manager was having this problem on >his machine. He had two mappped drives that were no longer active. Once I disconnected >them, the "Look In" drop down menu sped right up. I about pulled my hair out trying >to resolve that one. I did a little searching and found your thread.....Thanks again >sir! > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, April 29, 2003 at 2:34 pm Posted by Brian (1 messages posted) I've got the same problem. When I take my laptop home all my mapped drives are unavailable and everything takes so long. One possible solution I came across. Set your mapped drives to NOT reconnect at login. Then create a shortcut to them on your desktop. Then when you login you can double-click the shortcut and this will remap the drive for you. It seems to work, but it's not the best answer. If anyone has a better solution, I'd like to hear it. On Saturday, March 15, 2003 at 3:41 pm, Ian Lazerwitz wrote: >I think this is a semi-viable solution but I think there has got to be a time out >value in the registry that will allow it to time out while checking these mapped >drives. I am toying with the idea of opening an incident with M$ support. > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Friday, May 16, 2003 at 11:10 am Posted by Bill Kearney (2 messages posted) Perhaps a script that looked at the items in the Network Places, tried to connect them and delete the ones that failed might be workable. That same idea could be applied to deleting the files in %userprofile\Recent\* On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: > >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network >shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network >share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start >button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network >share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that >take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, >disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). >After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Friday, May 16, 2003 at 11:21 am Posted by Bill Kearney (2 messages posted) This link might help someone that wants to script it: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scrguide/sas_fil_higv.asp On Friday, May 16, 2003 at 11:10 am, Bill Kearney wrote: >Perhaps a script that looked at the items in the Network Places, tried to connect >them and delete the ones that failed might be workable. That same idea could be >applied to deleting the files in %userprofile\Recent\* > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Thursday, May 29, 2003 at 11:35 am Posted by Ryan (1 messages posted) Chris: I had a mapped device that was not connecting. Previously, my drop-down lists were taking 15 sec. to populate. After removing the bad device, my list populates in 3-4 sec. Thanks for your help! On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 6:42 am, Chris Boes wrote: >Sean, > >A few of us in the office here recently had that problem on Win2000 machines. Here >is what we found and how we fixed it. > >When you click the Look In drop-down, windows tries to ckeck out all your network >shares before dropping down. On our machines, we had an old connection to a network >share that no longer existed. To find and fix, open Explorer (right-click the start >button, click Explore on the pop-up menu). Under My Computer, right-click each network >share listed. If you have the same problem we did, you will find one or more that >take a very long time to show the pop-up menu. If these are no longer valid shares, >disconnect them (right-click the share, click Disconnect from the pop-up menu). >After we disconnected the offending share, everything ran lickidy-split again! > >Good Luck, >-cb > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Tuesday, June 17, 2003 at 3:13 pm Posted by jo jo (1 messages posted) How about creating a batch script that deletes all mapped drives, then reconnects them, and throwing it in the startup folder? This way the old ones get dumped, and if the new ones are available they get mapped on startup. If not they dont. On Friday, May 16, 2003 at 11:21 am, Bill Kearney wrote: >This link might help someone that wants to script it: > >http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scrguide/sas_fil_higv.asp > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Friday, October 17, 2003 at 8:20 am Posted by Jim (1 messages posted) These suggestions are great, but I'm having this problem with desktops on a domain. We have login scripts that run and the mapped drives must timeout, because if the user doesn't access them the pulldown menus take forever. Any ideas? Some kind of script to refresh the mapped drives would be great. On Thursday, May 29, 2003 at 11:35 am, Ryan wrote: > >Chris: >I had a mapped device that was not connecting. Previously, my drop-down lists were >taking 15 sec. to populate. After removing the bad device, my list populates in >3-4 sec. > >Thanks for your help! > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Thursday, November 13, 2003 at 9:38 am Posted by Jason (1 messages posted) My suggestion would be to run this script on your server, which will set the timeout value to the amximum allowed.... (8721 years but obviously hasn't been tested) From the command prompt: net config server /autodisconnect:-1 On Friday, October 17, 2003 at 8:20 am, Jim wrote: > >These suggestions are great, but I'm having this problem with desktops on a domain. > We have login scripts that run and the mapped drives must timeout, because if the >user doesn't access them the pulldown menus take forever. Any ideas? Some kind >of script to refresh the mapped drives would be great. > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Slow Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 10:11 am Posted by RR (1 messages posted) Have your tried an older version of Novell's client. I had a simalar problem sometime back and this worked for me. Novell's latest client software has a tendancy to slow things down or hang at times. On Thursday, August 16, 2001 at 4:24 pm, Sean wrote: > >Our office just purchased some new Win2k workstations... SP2 is installed. > >They are also running the lastest Novell client (4.8) with the latest Novell Service >Pack. > >The machines are very fast on the network, but there is often a 10 to 20 second pause >whenever you use the "Open File" option from any program. The pause comes when you >drop down the "Look In" list that shows you all of your drive letters and network >options. Finally the list appears, and you can browse mapped network drives without >any slowness or pauses whatsoever. > >The pause only seems to happen after you have not used your network drives for awhile. >We have NT 4.0 workstations running the same Novell client without any problems. >It only affects Win2000. It happens on all of our machines....Dell, IBM, etc. > >We tried disabling the computer browsing service, and setting IPX as preferred protocol >for the Novell client. I also disabled offline folders. I even disabled realtime >virus protection. Nothing has helped. > >Neither Novell nor Microsoft acknowledge this problem, but the Novell client seems >to work fine with NT 4. > >Any suggestions? > >Thanks, > >Sean [Reply or follow-up to this message] Slow to open files in Office apps Monday, March 12, 2007 at 10:53 am Posted by Bill Jacobs (1 messages posted) If disabling the network drives doesn't do it, users can try this: Use Office Update to install service pack 3 (if not already installed) http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us OR download the Service Pack 3 standalone module at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=85AF7BFD-6F69-4289-8BD1-EB966BCDFB5E&displaylang=en#filelist THEN: 1. Quit all Microsoft Office programs. 2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. (Usual regedit notice: regedit can blow up your computer and render you sterile.) 3. Locate and then click to select the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\Open Find 4. After you select the key that is specified in step 3, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD. 5. Type DisableAutoSelect, and then press ENTER. 6. Right-click DisableAutoSelect, and then click Modify. 7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK. 8. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor. This supposedly disables a feature called "Autoselect" which may be at the heart of the problem. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows 2000 Discussion Forum