My Documents Problem

[glennda]

Hello all,

 

Recently we have been experiencing a rather strange problem with My Documents, some users after logging on when trying to access my documents the whole machine just freezes, no errors in the event logs, the only way around it problem, is ending explorer, and starting it again. but obviously students/staff don't have access to this, so have to power off and power on again. the strangest thing is, its not specifc to users or computers, one min the user a could use machine 1, it freezes so reboots logs back in and it works, then 5 mins laters once opened some work, they then try to save it the machine freezes again. but user b could use machine 1 and it works fine. it just seems to be totally random, not no1 in the office has a clue why it is happening as there are no errors etc

 

any ideas people?

 

thanks in advance

 

Toby

[oxide54]

Hello all,

 

Recently we have been experiencing a rather strange problem with My Documents, some users after logging on when trying to access my documents the whole machine just freezes, no errors in the event logs, the only way around it problem, is ending explorer, and starting it again. but obviously students/staff don't have access to this, so have to power off and power on again. the strangest thing is, its not specifc to users or computers, one min the user a could use machine 1, it freezes so reboots logs back in and it works, then 5 mins laters once opened some work, they then try to save it the machine freezes again. but user b could use machine 1 and it works fine. it just seems to be totally random, not no1 in the office has a clue why it is happening as there are no errors etc

 

any ideas people?

 

thanks in advance

 

Toby

 

hmm sounds a bit like the non specific internet problem!

[glennda]

hmm sounds a bit like the non specific internet problem!

 

shutup you! lol

[Batman]

Are we talking about roaming profiles here?

 

We get similar issues when too many laptops are using the same access point at once... it all crawls to a standstill and users loose their connection to the servers for a short while, which are where their "My Documents" resides. It never happens on wired connections, I guess because there's always plenty of bandwidth.

[oxide54]

actually where are the user' shares???

 

its not on samba box is it?

[glennda]

Are we talking about roaming profiles here?

 

We get similar issues when too many laptops are using the same access point at once... it all crawls to a standstill and users loose their connection to the servers for a short while, which are where their "My Documents" resides. It never happens on wired connections, I guess because there's always plenty of bandwidth.

 

we are talking about roaming profiles, but not on the laptops, which it normally is where we have problems, when the teachers use 25/30 laptops in a classroom through one access point which has a 100mb connection. its not the roaming profile, as we have set some test students up with local profiles for the last week, still the same problem. the only thing i can think of is folder redirection, but there is no errors at all

 

Toby

[glennda]

actually where are the user' shares???

 

its not on samba box is it?

 

no, on a totally windows box! no linux files servers apart from what the students have set up for there radio network which is in a hut at the corner of the site not connected to the real world! linux is only used for the hosting using kvm, actually works really well.. but then the server thats running 12 vm's has 64gb ram!!

[Danlewis3]

we had this issue a few weeks ago, random freezing opening my documents no error logs. 2 weeks later the server died.

[glennda]

we had this issue a few weeks ago, random freezing opening my documents no error logs. 2 weeks later the server died.

 

oh, i forgot to mention, its not just one server, its three different file server's! and i hope they all don't go poop!

 

Toby

[Danlewis3]

we replaced our servers with some 1tb ready NAS boxes and we have had no freezing at all now.

 

get wireshark on the switches to see if anything is broadcasting

[glennda]

we replaced our servers with some 1tb ready NAS boxes and we have had no freezing at all now.

 

get wireshark on the switches to see if anything is broadcasting

 

allready done that, nothing's broadcasting, apart from securus occasionly when we accidentally unplug the box, the server's themselves are not that old, 2 years at most, but havn't been here that long so am not sure, but they are all hp dl380 g5's

 

toby

[tmcd35]

we are talking about roaming profiles, but not on the laptops, which it normally is where we have problems, when the teachers use 25/30 laptops in a classroom through one access point which has a 100mb connection. its not the roaming profile, as we have set some test students up with local profiles for the last week, still the same problem. the only thing i can think of is folder redirection, but there is no errors at all

 

Toby

 

Is the problem only with laptops?

 

30 laptops sharing (assuming 802.11n) a 55mbps connection is, well SLOOOOoooowwwww. Bin there, done that - refuse to buy another t-shirt (no wifi laptops here ).

 

It sounds like a bandwidth issue, even if it is occuring on desktops as well.

 

How meny users total? Whats the spec of the file server? How fast are the hard drives? What speed is the servers LAN connection? How meny switch hops between the effected machines and the server? What are the speed and contention ratio's of the links between the the effected machines and servers?

 

I'd bet the answer to your problems is in there somewhere.

 

EDIT: another thought (based on the Wireshark suggestion above). Do you switches support 'Spanning Tree Protocol'? And is it turned on? If they do and it is turned on - check for a network loop, cable plugged between to LAN sockets, near the effected PC's.

Edited December 7, 2009 by tmcd35

[glennda]

Is the problem only with laptops?

 

30 laptops sharing (assuming 802.11n) a 55mbps connection is, well SLOOOOoooowwwww. Bin there, done that - refuse to buy another t-shirt (no wifi laptops here ).

 

It sounds like a bandwidth issue, even if it is occuring on desktops as well.

 

How meny users total? Whats the spec of the file server? How fast are the hard drives? What speed is the servers LAN connection? How meny switch hops between the effected machines and the server? What are the speed and contention ratio's of the links between the the effected machines and servers?

 

I'd bet the answer to your problems is in there somewhere.

 

EDIT: another thought (based on the Wireshark suggestion above). Do you switches support 'Spanning Tree Protocol'? And is it turned on? If they do and it is turned on - check for a network loop, cable plugged between to LAN sockets, near the effected PC's.

 

nope its happens on both, but more on pc's, but thats only beacuse we have twice as many computers as laptops, the server's all have 1gb network connections, first thing we did was change the network lead, all the machines have 100mb connections. there is no networks cable loop backs and stp is enabled, accidentally did that a few weeks ago, and it went proper mental!

 

1000 machines, 1500 users spread across 3 file servers, 2 are dl380 g5's dual quad core, 6gb ram. the other is quad core dl380 g4 6gb ram. they are all scsi hard disks 7200rpm. all machines in the school/apart from a handful go through HP/nortel switches then into the backbone and connected to the server, its not specific to parts off the school, had all the fibre tested recently and was ok/if not then cables that where not ok where replaced.

[glennda]

We think we have found the problem. McAfee oas was set to scan everything on read aswell as write, and was timing out scanning shortcuts, therefore any user with a shortcut in there my docs/profile was experiencing slow logins aswell as explorer freezing on access

[glennda]

having not fixed the problem with removing the mcafee we spent even longer looking into it, and last friday we spent the day looking at it, one of the things we tried was turning off securus, o and it worked 3 months of looking into it wasted! rang securus and they said o yeah, we know about the problem and are working on it... nice of them to tell us!!!

[Elison]

hello

i had almost the same problem. here is my guess

have you monitored your network to detect viruses? which antivirus do you use?

and do you use firewall? sometimes it detects some actions as malware operating and try to close or disconnect the connection. Thus everything slows down. and sometimes turns off. ecpessialy when you have large network with a lot of computers (laptops)which try to access to shared documents at the same time

Best regards

[kearton]

one of the things we tried was turning off securus, o and it worked 3 months of looking into it wasted! rang securus and they said o yeah, we know about the problem and are working on it... nice of them to tell us!!!

Out of curiosity, what version of the Securus Client are you running please?

[glennda]

Out of curiosity, what version of the Securus Client are you running please?

 

we have just upgraded to version 7.00.09 which has solved the problem, but i cannot remember the release that didnt work, im guessing the was 7.00.08 as we only upgraded to it in november time.

 

if your having a similar problem ring them up, the sent us the patch after a few days and now it all seems to be working. touch wood!

 

Toby