Saving Excel files to Win 2003 Server very slow

[chris]

Hello:

We have in ongoing problem and I have not been able to find a direct
solution to it yet, and was wondering if anybody could provide some
insight.

The problem is users that are saving files to a network drive from
Excel 2003 SP2 on Windows XP SP2, to a Windows 2003 SP1 server
(Appliance Edition), takes a very long time. I watched the bytes
written in task manager... basically Excel.exe writes the total size of
the file to the destination quickly at first (creating the temp file I
believe), then the speed slows down to around 100 bytes / second as it
continues to save the file. I am testing Excel files around 200-300KB
in size, but the problem is there for all Excel files. Copying files
normally in Explorer works fine, and seems to also be fine saving from
other apps like Word, etc.

The client machine is connecting on a VPN, but this problem seems to be
specific to this Windows 2003 SP1 server. When saving the exact same
files to a Windows XP workstation to the same network as the server,
the saves go very quick as expected. So to me it seems like a Windows
2003 server issue.

Has anybody else seen this problem or know of a possible solution?
Thank you in advance for any & all feedback!

 

[Trooper]

The problem seems to be:
(The client machine is connecting on a VPN)

Direct connect to the share works, because you are not encrypting the
packets being sent to the server.
VPN is running slower than direct connect to begin with....

We would be interested in the reults of your post to the networking
group.

 

[chris]

My main post may have been misleading. Actually we are able to save
over the VPN without any problems, from an XP client to another XP
machine (through the VPN) sharing out a folder. But, when we save from
the same XP client to our Windows 2003 server through the same VPN,
that is where we see the problem. So our problem is specifically on
the Windows 2003 server only. We are doing some further tests on this
server. Also, we found that the problem also happens with MS Word
documents as well. However Acrobat documents and others do not have
this problem.

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Checked to make sure that an antivirus scan isn't slowing things down? If
documents like Word and Excel (which could contain macros that could attack
a system) are slow but other document types are not, that's where I'd start
looking.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* for the benefit of all. Private mail is usually not replied to.
* My website, such as it is ... http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[chris]

Thank you for the reply. We did try stopping Symantec Antivirus on
both the server and the client PC, and still the same results. We did
finally narrow this problem down somewhat after quite a bit of testing.
The problem seems to be with a specific share on our server that is
used by multiple people (I showed about 54 concurrent on average at a
given time). We compared two mapped drives from the client PC, both
mapped to the same folder on the server's filesystem, one going through
the specific share used by multiple people, and also a share only used
by the client PC user. For example, one drive is mapped to
"\\server\home\userfolder" and the other drive is mapped to
"\\server\userfolder" ; both point to the same exact folder on the
server. The performance on the share used by multiple people was quite
poor (\\server\home\userfolder), and showed all the signs of our
initial problem (Word/Excel writing back around 100 bytes/sec.).
However the share used by only the client PC user (\\server\userfolder)
was significantly faster.

Our server has more than enough resources (dual Xeon 3.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM)
and CPU usage is quite low (< 10%) and only about 25% of the physical
memory is being used. Plus I would think that if the server was being
taxed somehow that it would affect all shares.

We are trying to find any information on this type of problem, and so
far come up empty handed. Has anybody seen this type of problem
before?

Thank you again for all feedback and help!!

 

[Malke]

Thank you for the reply. We did try stopping Symantec Antivirus on
both the server and the client PC, and still the same results. We did
finally narrow this problem down somewhat after quite a bit of
testing.
The problem seems to be with a specific share on our server that is
used by multiple people (I showed about 54 concurrent on average at a
given time). We compared two mapped drives from the client PC, both
mapped to the same folder on the server's filesystem, one going
through the specific share used by multiple people, and also a share
only used
by the client PC user. For example, one drive is mapped to
"\\server\home\userfolder" and the other drive is mapped to
"\\server\userfolder" ; both point to the same exact folder on the
server. The performance on the share used by multiple people was
quite poor (\\server\home\userfolder), and showed all the signs of our
initial problem (Word/Excel writing back around 100 bytes/sec.).
However the share used by only the client PC user
(\\server\userfolder) was significantly faster.

Our server has more than enough resources (dual Xeon 3.0 GHz, 2 GB
RAM) and CPU usage is quite low (< 10%) and only about 25% of the
physical
memory is being used. Plus I would think that if the server was being
taxed somehow that it would affect all shares.

We are trying to find any information on this type of problem, and so
far come up empty handed. Has anybody seen this type of problem
before?

Not enough bandwidth. Try setting up a second file server (you can do
this cheaply with a Linux box if you like). Also look at your network
hardware and make sure it is good quality.

Malke

 

[canisious]

I'm facing the same problem, additionaly i found that if u close the open
file from client the server still shows that file being used by that client
some time it close after long time, this is critical when a client cpu get
stuck while a file open other clients can't acces that file, I got some
information regarding this in microsoft website
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=150384
I edited the registry i feel i got some speed in file accesing but still i
face the problem when a client get stuck. this problem becs of when a client
close the file the server must disconnect that file, we have novell server as
file server i check this matter it's disconnecting closed file immediatly. i
thing if u find solution for this u can solve ur problem. I'm still tring to
get solutin for this if u hav any ideas pls reply

thanks
cani

 

[Scott Lowe]

Hello:

We have in ongoing problem and I have not been able to find a direct
solution to it yet, and was wondering if anybody could provide some
insight.

The problem is users that are saving files to a network drive from
Excel 2003 SP2 on Windows XP SP2, to a Windows 2003 SP1 server
(Appliance Edition), takes a very long time. I watched the bytes
written in task manager... basically Excel.exe writes the total size of
the file to the destination quickly at first (creating the temp file I
believe), then the speed slows down to around 100 bytes / second as it
continues to save the file. I am testing Excel files around 200-300KB
in size, but the problem is there for all Excel files. Copying files
normally in Explorer works fine, and seems to also be fine saving from
other apps like Word, etc.

The client machine is connecting on a VPN, but this problem seems to be
specific to this Windows 2003 SP1 server. When saving the exact same
files to a Windows XP workstation to the same network as the server,
the saves go very quick as expected. So to me it seems like a Windows
2003 server issue.

Has anybody else seen this problem or know of a possible solution?
Thank you in advance for any & all feedback!

Try disabling SMB signing on the clients and the server (use the Local
Security Policy console). I have seen instances where this will affect
network performance.

HTH.