Excel 2000 with macros slows to write to W2k3/XP disk or shares

C

Chris V.

Hello,

I've some strange problems I have trouble to investigate, hope someone will
have tricks.

Situation that was working before:
- Client W2K pro / SP4 + patches (windows update)
- office 2K latest SP + patches (from officeupdate.com)
- some apps running as Macros under Excel, all the excel files on a share
hosted by W2K SP4 / latest patches (mainly 9 files opened at a given point of
time).
- some macro are built to save the files (.Save method). time to save the
9 sheet : around 2 sec, matching roughly the time spend to copy then using
Windows Explorer

New situation
- Client W2K pro / SP4 + patches
- office 2K latest SP + patches (from officeupdate.com)
- Files are now hosted by W2K3 SP1 + patches
-Time to copy the file to the share using Explorer : <2sec (Slight
improvement).
- time spent to save the file (same code / files) >40sec !

I have managed to reproduced this issue while saving locally to XP (I can't
move to Office 2k3 at this point)

Extra test we run with disturbing results:
- Same client / W2K3 server as host for the shares
- create a simple excel file -> Time to save +/- equal to the time to copy
using Explorer
- adding a macro (not used, just written in the file) -> time to save
increases while the time to copy in Explorer is still the same.
- at the end, it seems that the time to save increases proportionnally
with the number of macros attached (no matter how big the macros are), when
the time to copy does not changed(or increases accordinlgy to increase of
size of the file if big enough to impact)

When using filemon to analyze the macro behavior, I can see Excel writing
the temp file with stange name before copying it to the final location as
exepected.
However, filemon shows WRITE requests with a bunch of FLUSH requests in
between, also for local saving. I though FLUSH was related to SMB cache
flushing, I'm bit surprised to see it on a local saving, maybe a trick ?.

As soon as the file are hosted back to W2K machine, speed are back to normal.

That's all the details I have for now, any idea where to look will be much
appreciated !

Thanks
Chris
 

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