Network shares and locking up

On one of our sites, when users open programs like Excel, Word, etc and then try to access files on SERVERA, they lock up the applications in question a majority of the time when trying to browse/list those files. This also happens when trying to save as to those folders in that share. This is not with just one user on the Domain and the network is 100mbit and there are no WAN connections between them and the server in question. Very ood and becoming quite a problem. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

My first impulse is to check the firewalls. Like if users have a firewall on their individual machines make sure there is a rule allowing communication to and from this server.

Also, make sure the server doesn't have any firewalls running that would prevent access.

You should be able to ping each other from the command prompt to ensure that there is not a firewall in the way.

Other than that, it could be a problem with too many users trying to access it at once. You could test this by trying to perform the same operations the users are when no one is there. Like really early in the morning or late in the day, or on weekends or something. Depending on how your place works.

If it still happens when no one is there, then I would try going to the server and messing around with it to see if anything is odd. Start pinging stuff, try netstat to see if things look ok, make sure computers can see the server, vice versa, etc...

 

Also, you may want to go into your services and disable the web service. Sometimes that will solve the problem.