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Slow network performance with NT > Win2k upgrade.

759 views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  gsbham 
#1 ·
I am having problems with slowness on my new Win2k network. It is a Windows 2000 Small Business Server with less then 40 users. This is a new install, it was an upgrade from NT but we did a clean install.

Since the upgrade the users are complaining of poor network response when opening files on the server. I have one user that has some linked Excel files that takes about 20 seconds to open and 15 seconds to save. No one ever timed how long it took to do before the upgrade but the user is sure that it was close to about 5 seconds.

The only protocol loaded on the WS is TCP/IP but File and Print Sharing is loaded, would that use bandwidth? I have read posts from other boards that mention setting the NIC to full duplex 100 instead of Auto Sense. When I change the WS from Auto to full the client can no longer talk to the network. The server is set to Full 100.

From what I gather Auto Sense can cause broadcast storms. I just downloaded LanExplorer that is supposed to help an Admin identify storms, bottle necks, etc… but I am not sure what I should be looking for. Any ideas or advice?
 
#2 ·
Unfortunately I can't help you but we have the same problem and we haven't solved it yet. We have win98, NT and win2k machines next to eachother on the same ethernet loop and the old NT machines and win98 machines access the network much much faster than the win2k ones which are supposed to be snazzy superfast machines. I hope someone out there has the answer

Steven
 
#3 ·
Well I have the same problem, my Win2000 PC is the slowest on the network while it is the fastest PC in my company.
I also noticed that my graphics performance was unreasonably slow.
Running the system information utility, I found out that windows2000 have assigned IRQ 11 to ALL my PCI-AGP cards, that is the network card, the VGA, the SCSI controller and the sound controller.
That could explain the poor performance on these systems.
I ran Scisoft Sandra, and found out that windows also keep increasing the PCI latency to 128 clks (which is ok for the VGA) when I have told the bios to set it on 32 clks.
In the mean time Winblows won't let me assign the IRQ to these devices manually, although I have set the bios to manual.
So I suppose the next step is to uninstall winblows 2000 and either install the good ol' NT or maybe Mandrake Linux hehe.

Unless someone can tell me where in the registry I can change the IRQ assigned to these plug and pray devices...:mad:
 
#4 ·
Hmmmmmm, My network card is also assigned to the same interrupt as the video. Is this a known issue? Yesterday I started monitoring the traffic on our network with LanExplorer. Although I am not sure exactly what I am looking for this doesn’t look like I am having a lot of collisions. So my broadcast theory doesn’t seem to have any validity to it.


 
#5 ·
No I don't think it has anything to do with network collisions, in such a case tha whole network would be slow.
But as I said, even the benchmarks of the VGA are too low, it is a geforce2 MX 400 with nvidias latest XP 21.83 drivers and it's 3D benchmarks are lower than a TNT2 M64 on another computer running winme.
So, I'd bet it has to do with the irq, a lot of devices have to share the same IRQ, and the latency is high, that means that each device is blocking the others for a long period, resulting in a general slow down of the affected subsystems.
BUT I cannot even change the IRQs of the devices, Windoze won't let me.
 
#6 ·
I had similar problem on my network. My problem was helped with the addition of a Wins server to our network. It took a few days for everything to get into the database before I saw a major improvement.

The other thing we did was to replace all our hubs with 3com superstack switches. These remember which port to send packets to, so the packets are not running everywhere. They also allow full duplexing automatically at whatever speed the cards can handle.


You could also check that the server is not going powering down the hard drives. Look in both the bios and inside windows.
 
#7 ·
Thanks Brooks, I have wondered about going to a Switch over Hub but the price has scared me off a little. What bothers me is that this network was pretty fast with NT 4 as the server using the same hardware (3Com Super Stack II hub). Is Win2k so much more chattier then NT 4 that it requires a hardware change? I was also under the impression that Win2K preferred a DNS server to Wins.
 
#8 ·
I know that on a mixed network, I had much slower access times with my 2k boxes than my NT boxes.

Wins is used to resolve computer names to IP addresses. Most people map to network folders with \\servername\foldername. This is the type of thing Wins helps resolve. The good thing about it is that you can set it up on your server and try it for a week or so and if it is not working you can uninstall it.

Try reading this article from Microsoft to help with understanding Wins roll in a 2000 environment.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/communications/nameadrmgmt/wins.asp

If you can get the money, the switches are worth it.
 
#9 ·
Switching the server’s NIC from Full Duplex 100 to Auto took care of the problem completely. I was told that 3Com NICs prefer this or hardware select over forcing it explicitly and apparently that is the case because it works beautifully now.

Before the switch an app that took 3 minutes to open now takes about 3 seconds. Thanks for all the help and hopefully this post will help someone else who runs into this.
 
#10 ·
Well, I don't have 3Com NICs, and our network already has a WINS server.
And now I have another problem that has happened several times already:
I have lost the properties for the network connection from Network and Dial-up Connections. The last 2 times that this happened I had to reinstall Windows 2000.
Anyone can help?:(
 
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