Computer/network gurus...got a question for ya

[GoinAllTheWay]

I work in a small family business as an Insurance broker, I also double as the IT guy. More of a PC person but I do have some knowledge on how networks work. I'm experiencing a problem with a PC and I'll try to describe it the best I can.

So...Insurance Brokerage.....

Each night I download policy updates from each insurer we represent into our agency manager. These policy "updates" basically overwrite what we had before. However, before overwriting the old policy, it archives it in case we need it down the road. Same thing happens each time we use this agency manager to modify a policy. It archives the previous policy first.

Recently I bought a new computer. Much faster and robust than the old one. Every piece of software runs just as fast, if not faster than the old one.

So the issue I'm having is these policy merges take waaaaaaay longer than the used to. As does modifying them. The program appears to hang for about 5-10 seconds when archiving where before it archived so quickly you barely saw it happen. It doesn't sound like much but spread that over 100+ updates, and a procedure that once took less than 5 minutes is now taking about 20.

So I called tech support for the software vendor to see if they could shed some light on the situation and this is basically what he's trying to tell me:

An issue with my computer/network card/cabling is manifesting itself in one small part of a single piece of software.

Does this sound plausible? Like I said, every other program that draws on network resources works just as fast, if not faster than on the old machine. Yet he feels the issue could lie in anything other than his software.

[nik-]

UAC delay? Try disabling UAC and see if it runs at the speed you're used to.

[psicodude]

Yeah, UAC is a good place to start. If you can, keep performance monitor running while your policy update is happening and see if anything is obvious.

[TorqueDog]

Possibilities (off the top of my head):
UAC
Antivirus software - Add your application's data files to the real-time scanning exclusions in Windows Defender or whichever AV app you're using.

Typically, these temporary app hangs are the result of something else slowing the application from accessing its files, and usually real-time antivirus ends up being the culprit. I've seen Exchange Hub Transport servers shut down the transport service because the customer's server team didn't apply the appropriate antivirus exclusions.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Interesting. So UAC = User Access Control, yes? At this point, I have no AV on this particular system so we can rule that out.

Would UAC still be an issue if I'm using the same credentials on new machine as old one? And when you say to try disabling it, do you mean on the machine in question or on the server?

[cKy]

Is the network card set to 100 mbps instead of 1 gig? Could explain why apps itself operate fast, but data transfer is slow. Check your task manager - Networking tab - to see what the link speed is.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Nope, card is at 1Gig. My main reason for posing this question is to see if someone more experienced than I would tend to agree with the guy. I know it's not easy to shed light on a situation without a) being in front of the machine and/or b) familiar with the program in question.

Personally, I don't get the feeling that this has anything to do with the computer or networking equipment. I've transferred a 500meg file from the server to my local drive on the machine in question and it took about as long as I would expect, done in less than 30 secs.

The support guy suggested it try to do the same from another machine and see how the speeds compare. I don't get the point as this one did it as fast as I would expect it too. He also suggested that I try to do the policy merging at the server directly. Predictably, it was much faster.

I agree with him in one respect, the issue clearly lies in this new machine. I don't, however, agree with him that it's an issue with the computer or equipment. Instead there is an issue with the program in question.

I could tell he was stumped. He had no idea what the problem was but seemed hell bent on blaming anything but his product.

He did connect to both my machine and the server to look around. I watched him. All he did was check the shortcut paths, looked at the size of a couple of the databases and then looked at the CPU and RAM performance on both machines, neither was even close to saturated.

[Hack&Lube]

I agree blaming the network configuration makes no sense unless that has actually changed or if the branches were sending you their data over slow links, etc. You could try procmon to monitor the processes as they run.

[photon]

I'd blame something other than the software as well, it doesn't sound like software itself; when software uses a network resource it usually does so through Windows libraries rather than its own custom libraries.

Is there a difference in how the computer is connecting to the networked drive? I.e. connecting through windows network rather than a mapped drive? I've seen strange things like that before where if I access the thing through \\192.168.1.100 vs. a mapped drive they behave differently (though they shouldn't).

I'd also ask if the network resource is being shared in multiple ways (i.e. my NAS can share the same resource via NFS and Samba), maybe one is playing nicely and the other isn't and it's connecting a different way? Though it sounds like it's all Windows so that's probably not it.

You tested the network speed with copying a 500MB file but that doesn't really test the scenario you describe, it sounds like a latency issue rather than a transfer issue since the updates are small but there's 100 of them.

iTunes runs terribly if the files are on my NAS for this reason; transferring files is fine and fast, but the file access latency is higher and iTunes does a lot of individual file accesses for some reason.

Not sure if there's a tool that could test the latency of a network share.

EDIT: Could also try to update the network card drivers.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Interesting Photon, thanks.

No, our programs don't like connecting through windows network, it has to be a mapped drive and that certainly has not changed. The ONLY change, as far a I know, is the OS. I went from XP to Win7.

Would pinging the server show any issues with latency? Just for S&G's I tried it and it shows less than 1ms.

[Hack&Lube]

It could be an authentication issue. Are you mapping drives with credentials that have the full specified local network or domain name? IE: domain\username ?

[photon]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

No, our programs don't like connecting through windows network, it has to be a mapped drive and that certainly has not changed. The ONLY change, as far a I know, is the OS. I went from XP to Win7.

Haha "only" change.

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Would pinging the server show any issues with latency? Just for S&G's I tried it and it shows less than 1ms.

Doubtful, unless it was actually a network level latency issue. I'm thinking more a latency issue with the file sharing protocol and the server, pinging would use a different protocol.

Have any other Windows 7 boxes you could use to test with?

[GoinAllTheWay]

Have any other Windows 7 boxes you could use to test with?

Yes Just thought of that myself. If it happens there too I may have to eat a bit of crow.

**edit**

Crap.....just tried a policy change on another Win7 machine, the archiving hangs there too. Tried the same thing on another XP machine, no hang.

Double crap. I mean it's good, getting closer to figuring this out but ya....what goes good with Crow?

With that in mind and knowing there is no hang on Server 2008 or an XP machine, what would the next step be on a Win7 machine?

[photon]

You could also check the NIC settings to make sure it isn't something silly like the card being set to 10Mbit or half duplex, I think I ran into that once where the NIC was set to "Auto" but would only ever use half duplex, I changed it manually to full duplex and it worked fine.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Is that done in Device Manager?

[photon]

Yeah should be under the NIC in the Device Manager somewhere. It's a long shot but you never know.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Ok, went into Device Manager and network adapters, went through all the tabs and didn't find anything relevant. Then went into network and sharing > Local area connection status. Can't find a place to manually change the speed it operates at but it does show clearly Speed: 1.0 Gbps

[photon]

Should be under the advanced tab, something like this:

[Tawiskaron]

What happens if you try running the program in winxp compatibility mode?

[GoinAllTheWay]

Wow....I don't have that option. I see most of the options in your list but not all of them.

This is a realtek NIC, I've heard a number of times they blow. Wonder if I should buy a dedicated card.