[Waters_10]

I'm having network problems with my 2 nforce2 PC's. Some info on my system:


- I have XP SP2 on both computers.


- I used Windows Network wizard to set up my LAN.


- I'm not using a router, just 2 NIC's on the main computer. The main computer uses the onboard NIC for Internet Access and I have a PCI NIC to connect to my HTPC. My HTPC uses the onboard NIC.


- Main computer runs 24/7 while HTPC goes to S3 every once in a while.


- I use windows ICS and it works perfect. Pretty good speed here, while browsing/downloading, no matter what else I'm doing on both computers.


The problem I have is very slow file transfer and windows explorer locking up. When this happens, watching movies via network is impossible. Here are the symptoms:


- I have a 200gb HD on my main computer that's shared with the HTPC. Once in a while, when I use windows explorer to browse this HD, windows explorer just stop responding while I'm expading some folders and I have to kill the process. When I try to transfer a (small) file, it starts at 10 sec and it keeps increasing till 10-40min and then locks up. When I try to watch a movie through the network, it gets really choppy.


- If I reboot the HTPC, problems seems to go away for a while. If I reboot and go straight to meedio/zoomplayer, I can watch movies the whole day, without any problems. But if I go to windows explorer, I'll get the problem again, maybe not immediately, but eventually. This indicates that my problem is related to windows explorer/folder browsing/file transfer.


- I used to get this problem everytime my HTPC came back from S3. I "fixed" that by changing power option on my NIC to keep my NIC powered up during S3. Now the problems happens independently of this.



So, it seems something triggers the problem. I could not track the cause, since it seems pretty random! Sometimes, I reboot my htpc and go straight to windows explorer to browse my shared drive and windows explorer locks up immediately. Sometimes, I can keep browsing folders for 1-10 minutes and then it locks up.


If anyone with more experience with network settings can help me out on this, I'd appreciate it. I'm considering formating the HTPC ...

 

[finlandia]

That's a weird one. Here are some ideas:


1) have you tried an older/newer ethernet driver? Try uninstalling the IDE driver if you're using one from the chipset manufacturer (if you're using MS's default driver, never mind). Some nforce2 owners had issues in the past with file corruption and file access lockups thanks to dodgy IDE drivers.


2) disable scheduled task search when browsing other PCs. For some reason, XP automatically searches for tasks when you browse another PC via explorer. This one solved a problem I had about explorer being dirt slow and then freezing when I browsed other PCs on the network. Follow the steps here: http://www.iamnotageek.com/a/78-p1.php


3) You might have a bad IDE cable on one of the PCs. Sometimes this problem doesn't show up in everyday use. You have to try to transfer/stream a lot of data in one shot. This one also happened to me. It seemed perfectly fine until I tried to copy a few gigs of data from my PC to the HTPC in one shot, and then I experienced the very long transfer times you described, followed by explorer freezing. Eventually the disk corrupted and I had to reformat it. Got a new cable and it all went away.

 

[Waters_10]

Thanks for the tips. I'll try them.


I don't believe the problem is my IDE cable, since my HD works perfectly when I access on the computer it's installed.


I'm really hoping tip #2 solves my problem.


Thanks again

 

[rlundy]

Try turning off all the security features that come with SP2 (in control panel). I had some similar problems with using UPnP and a netgear router. Turn it all off and reboot the pcs and see if they stay up.


SP2 seems to slowly close some ports-thats why its not a dead lockup and happens slowly-and any type of network activity slows down before it stops entirely.


Report back if you can.