Vista Ultimate & Business Network Issues

[Baser-X]

This may eventually need to be moved to the hardware fourm...

I'm running a network with a domain and I'm having issues with my Vista Ultimate box when transferring files over the network between my 2 Vista comps, more specifically when transferring from Ultimate to Business, it's fine when transferring from Business to Ultimate. What is happening is when I try to transfer any number of files, the Ultimate box slows to a crawl, the mouse is jittery, applications take forever to open, media plays in slow motion and/or skips if it plays at all.

No other computers have any problems when transferring. I can transfer fine from Ultimate to 2000 Server or any of the 3 XP Pro comps and I can also transfer just fine from any of the XP comps to either of the Vista comps.

On Ultimate, there's nothing in the error logs, CPU usage seems to peak out at 3% on core 2, 0% on core 1 when transferring, network and memory usage seems normal, and after a fresh install last night, the problem persists. I'm at a loss. The only thing I can think of is that Vista Business is SP1 but the option to update Ultimate to SP1 has not been available in Windows Update. The Vista Business comp is also set to allocate processor resources to background services since it's used primarily as network storage.

All of my computer/network specs are below. Any thoughts and/or suggestions appreciated.


Windows 2000 Server SP4 as domain controller running on a Dell GX240
-P4 1.5GHz / 768MB PC-133 RAM
-2x40GB IDE-133
-Dual D-Link 10/100 PCI NICs
-Active Directory / DNS / Print Server

Windows Vista Business SP1 (Classic) running on a Dell GX280
-P4 2.8GHz / 2.5GB (2x2GB / 2x256MB) Dual Chan PC2-4200 RAM
-60GB SATA II
-Promise FastTrak TX-4310 SATA II RAID Controller / 1.5TB RAID 0 Array (3x500GB SATA II)
-3COM 10/100 PCI NIC

Windows Vista Ultimate (Aero)
-ASUS M2R32-MVP Mobo
-AMD Althalon 64x2 5000+ BE 2.6GHz (not currently OC'd) / 4GB Dual Chan PC2-6400 RAM
-500GB SATA II / 160GB SATA II
-ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro PCI-e
-Onboard 10/100/1000 NIC
-550w PSU

Windows XP Pro
-BFG VNF4-Ultra Mobo
-AMD Athalon 64 3200+ 2GHz / 2GB Dual Chan PC3200 RAM
-80GB IDE / 200GB SATA II / 250GB SATAII
-ATI Radeon x1300 PCI-e
-Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC
-450w PSU

2 Laptops w/ XP Pro
Linksys WRT54GL 4-Port Router
Netgear FS105 5-Port Switch
All Cat5E cabling

[z1p]

Hi Baser-X,

Sorry this has been hanging out there so long. Are you still having the issue?
Have you looked into the problem any more? Is it only transfers from the ultimate to one machine or to any machine?

Have you tried pinging from the ultimate to the other machine to see what the ping times are? (use -t and -l <large # of bytes>, so that you get a good sample)

Have you used anything like sysinternals process monitor to see what processes are doing on the ultimate during the transfer? Diskmon and TCPmon might help too. (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx)

[Baser-X]

Sorry this has been hanging out there so long. Are you still having the issue?

No worries :) yes I am still having the problem.

Have you looked into the problem any more? Is it only transfers from the ultimate to one machine or to any machine?

The only other thing I've tried since I last messed with it was to default all of the services. I had disabled a bunch on the Business machine using Black Viper's site (http://www.blackviper.com) as a guide, but defaulting them all back didn't change anything. All of the services on the Ultimate machine were at default to begin with since I did a fresh install.

The Ultimate machine can transfer to any of the XP machines, desktop or laptop without any problems. It will also transfer to 2000 Server without any problems. The only machine it has problems transferring to is the Vista Business. And it's not that it won't transfer, it transfers at normal speed just fine, it's just a matter of the Ultimate box becoming useless while transferring. Oddly enough, if I use Remote Desktop from Vista ultimate to any of the XP machines and transfer files from the XP drive(s) to Vista Business, the Ultimate machine is still affected. It makes no sense at all.

Have you tried pinging from the ultimate to the other machine to see what the ping times are? (use -t and -l <large # of bytes>, so that you get a good sample)

From Ultimate to Business
Ping times are <1ms for normal ping
Ping times are 2ms for 1000 byte pings
Ping times are 11ms for 65500 byte pings

From Ultimate to to XP Pro
Ping times are <1ms for normal ping
Ping times are <1ms for 1000 byte pings
Ping times are 11ms - 12ms (avg 11) for 65500 byte pings

I did all of these with 100 packets and there was no loss

Have you used anything like sysinternals process monitor to see what processes are doing on the ultimate during the transfer? Diskmon and TCPmon might help too. (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx)

No I haven't tried any of those, I just checked processes, CPU usage and network traffic using Windows builtin tools. I'll d/l and run some of those tonight when I start transferring some more data. I've got about 40GB to move over so I should be able to get some good samples of what's happening.

I don't think it matters, but my network is as such:
Cable Modem->Router->Switch with the XP Pro desktop being the only one plugged directly into the router, both Vista machines and 2000 Server are connected to the switch and all 3 laptops are wirelss.

Thanks again, I'll report back what I find out.

[z1p]

Are you running a workgroup or a domain? And which machine is the master in the setup?

I take it you are copying from a local folder to a remote folder, yes? Have you tried ftp instead?

[Baser-X]

I am running a domain with Windows 2000 Server as the DC (Active Directory / DNS / Print Server). I am copying from a local SATA drive on the Ultimate comp to a remote SATA RAID Array (using a PCI RAID controller - Promise FastTrak TX-4310) on the Vista Business comp which is running essentially as a file server. The Vista Business comp is set to utilize processor performance for background tasks.

I never even thought about using FTP, I'll have to give that a try.

As for a little testing I did last night using DiskMon and Process Explorer, I monitored the disk and process usage while at idle and while I was just using for normal activities (minus gaming) to get an idea of normal usage. Then I transferred 150 files totaling 11.6GB and monitored. The only obvious difference was that there was a lot more reads on the drive (different physical drive than Windows install drive) and that the CPU usage was a lot higher with both monitoring tools running, but the CPU usage dropped back to almost nothing once I closed the 2 apps.

Hopefully FTP will be a good workaround. I can live with that since transferring is fine between all other comps, and especially since I was eventually going to set up the Vista Business comp as an FTP server anyway. Thanks for your help z1p!

[z1p]

Baser-X, I ran across a tweak that looks like it may help (or maybe it won't)

C:\> netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

This was from wservernews and has been know to clear up slow file transfers on some vista versions.

[Baser-X]

You rock z1p! That seems to have done it. Thanks for all your help.

[z1p]

Thanks for the update, its good to know it works.

Sometimes it pays to be lucky instead of good. I got that info this week in a windows newsletter. Talk about timing.

-z1p