Network Troubleshooting

NOTE: Remember that having backups is a saving grace in the face of file/network problems. Network problems can corrupt your files in a heartbeat. If you have no backups, you are in big trouble (future or present - trouble will occur). Having backups is a responsibility you must take very seriously.

Network / file problems, can take many forms.

They can be caused by one or more of the following:

Drivers up to date? Windows networking is subject to a number of problems, Many of which can be solved simply by installing updated driver software from the manufacturer or (more often) Microsoft.

Windows NT users - Are you on service pack 6 instead of service pack 6a or another service pack? If so, expect lots of problems. Microsoft has acknowledged that service pack 6 broke a lot of things network-wise. You can get service pack 6a at their site or you can go back to service pack 5, either of which is stable. In addition, do not mix service packs on different NT machines on your network. In other words, run all your NT machines on service pack 5 or on service pack 6a, but not a mix of both service packs.

Is your network slow when using a mapped drive letter? Is the drive mapped to the main computer's drive or to a folder? If it is mapped to a folder, you will likely see a decrease in performance, often a quite noticeable decrease. We are not sure why this happens, but mapping directly to the drive has been proven time and time again to be faster. We have not discovered the reason for this, despite extended searches of Microsoft's tech database.

Novell Netware -
The problem could be your Novell Opportunistic Locking setting. Contact your network person for further details. How to turn it off? Go to Control Panel -> Networks -> Novell Client Properties -> Advanced Settings Tab -> Opportunistic Locking and make sure this is switched off on all client Machines - Also make sure True Commit is on at each client PC (This should help stop data corruption)

Performance issues are often caused by network protocol "bindings". Check the following Network protocols basics:

Make sure that your default network protocol has no bindings to a virtual device (dialup.....).

Does the system work on some machines but seems to "think about it" and then do nothing on others? Sometimes your network "times out" when loading Invoice! WinPro across a network. It's a big program, with a memory "footprint" of about 25 megs. You could try making a c:\Invoice! WinPro folder on the workstation, then copy the .exe and .dll files from the server's \Invoice! WinPro folder to the workstation's \Invoice! WinPro folder. Next, change the shortcut so that the target points to c:\Invoice! WinPro\Invoice! WinPro.exe instead of serverdriveletter\Invoice! WinPro\Invoice! WinPro.exe - But leave the "Start in" alone.

Does the system work on some machines but seems to "think about it" and then do nothing on others? Sometimes your Windows doesn't have enough "files" set in your config.sys. Try 100 or 125. If this isn't descriptive enough, you need to have your consultant do this for you. Sometimes having full-time virus scanning turned on does this. Ask your virus software vendor how to work around this OR exclude our program from your scanner if you can.

Power management - Do you have Energy Star features on your computers? Probably so. Power management and networking do not mix. You can have your computers' power management features turn off and/or dim the monitor, but do not have them turn off the hard drive, network cards etc. This will definitely cause you grief when computers are networked.

Database corruptions, timeouts and other troubles - Another issue is the various ways that Windows9x and NT try to improve performance, often at the price of stability. Sometimes these things work, other times they cause network timeouts because they force additional file operations behind the scenes and those file operations time out (fail). One way to turn one of these items off is to turn off "Synchronous buffer commits". To do this, click Control Panel, System, Performance, File System, Troubleshooting and check the "Disable synchronous buffer commits" checkbox. Further, Windows NT users face issues caused by some performance improvements that NT tries to implement with network applications by 'faking' multiple use of files. Unfortunately, some users experience file corruption because of this. This article is a bit of nerd-speak, but your network person should take a look at it if you are seeing "Access denied" errors on network files when they *know* that the network permissions are set properly.

Tune up your network Many of the aforementioned settings are automatically checked/corrected via a utility program called "Network Tune Up". The program is free. Note that it does change internal network settings and requires a reboot afterwards. The settings changed include oplocks (on Windows NT and Windows 2000) and the Windows9x/WindowsMe buffering settings noted above. It also checks Windows9x/WindowsMe machines to be sure they don't have a buggy version of the Microsoft network driver installed. You can download it from Bytemasters.

While it is certainly possible, don't automatically assume network errors are a program problem. These products are being used in many, many networked systems and by as many as 100 people simultaneously on one network. Do other multi-user applications work ok? Can you save a text file into our application's directory using Windows Notepad? If not, the problem is more than likely with the network setup. Just one little thing related to sharing or "permissions" can mess things up.