On my laptop I have 2 network drives mapped, and a network printer.  It 
works fine when connected to the network that these devices are on.  However 
if I go to a different network (eg home WLAN) then windows  explorer becomes 
almost impossible to use.  Every single time I click a folder or file the 
explorer window hangs completely for 10 or 20 seconds.

If I am not connected to any network, or I remove the two network maps and 
the printer, this problem disappears.  This makes me think explorer is 
somehow searching for these network resources, even when there is no chance 
to find them.

How do other people cope with this, I can't be the only one in this 
situation?

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scott wrote:
> Every single time I click a 
> folder or file the explorer window hangs completely for 10 or 20 seconds.

That is one of the things I love about Windows Explorer - it's complete 
inability to handle delays.

Click on A: by mistake, when there's nothing in the drive, and 
essentially the entire Windows UI locks up until it has determined 
there's nothing in the drive. And I don't just mean the window in 
question. The start menu stops working, windows stop repainting 
themselves, virtually the entire damned OS locks up because of one 
stupid disk drive! WTF?

Anyway, as to *your* problem... The whole "it locks up for 20 seconds" 
deal reeks of "network timeout". BTW, does anybody know why network 
timeouts are always set to 7 minutes or something? I mean, if you 
haven't got a reply in 800 ms or so, it's *obvious* that you're never 
going to get one! Retry or give up. Don't sit there for 7 minutes waiting!

I presume you've tried unmapping the mapped drives. Is the laptop part 
of a domain?

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> That is one of the things I love about Windows Explorer - it's complete 
> inability to handle delays.

I bet there's some core code that is still from Windows 1 :-)

> Click on A: by mistake, when there's nothing in the drive, and essentially 
> the entire Windows UI locks up until it has determined there's nothing in 
> the drive.

Don't remember the last machine I used with an "A" drive, but the same 
happens with CDs and DVDs that it can't read properly.

> I presume you've tried unmapping the mapped drives.

As I said, if I unmap the drives the problem goes away.  Issue is that I 
don't want to have to remap them everytime I connect to the network they're 
on!

I just couldn't find the "Only try to connect once to mapped drives until 
the network connection is changed" checkbox...

> Is the laptop part of a domain?

Yes.

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scott wrote:
>> That is one of the things I love about Windows Explorer - it's 
>> complete inability to handle delays.
> 
> I bet there's some core code that is still from Windows 1 :-)

Would surprise me. Apparently Windows NT still contains the entire 
Windows 3 kernel, unmodified, in case any software wants to use it.

Backwards compatibility is a truly evil thing. (This is why Haskell's 
unofficial motto is "avoid success at all costs".)

> Don't remember the last machine I used with an "A" drive, but the same 
> happens with CDs and DVDs that it can't read properly.

Or just the drive is empty. You'd think this wouldn't take long to 
figure out, but...

>> I presume you've tried unmapping the mapped drives.
> 
> As I said, if I unmap the drives the problem goes away.  Issue is that I 
> don't want to have to remap them everytime I connect to the network 
> they're on!
> 
> I just couldn't find the "Only try to connect once to mapped drives 
> until the network connection is changed" checkbox...

I'm not sure if there is one.

What I'd probably do is write a batch file to unmap the drives, and 
another to map them again. Put those two scripts on the desktop, click 
'em when required.

>> Is the laptop part of a domain?
> 
> Yes.

It's probably searching for a domain controller to authenticate to so 
that it can map the network drives. That's probably what the problem is.

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And lo On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:08:06 -0000, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

> On my laptop I have 2 network drives mapped, and a network printer.  It  
> works fine when connected to the network that these devices are on.   
> However if I go to a different network (eg home WLAN) then windows   
> explorer becomes almost impossible to use.  Every single time I click a  
> folder or file the explorer window hangs completely for 10 or 20 seconds.
>
> If I am not connected to any network, or I remove the two network maps  
> and the printer, this problem disappears.  This makes me think explorer  
> is somehow searching for these network resources, even when there is no  
> chance to find them.
>
> How do other people cope with this, I can't be the only one in this  
> situation?

Hmm okay you don't say which version of Windows you're running, but in  
Folder options try turning off "Automatically search for network folders  
and printers" if that doesn't work try turning off the SSDP service.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook v2 wrote:

> Hmm okay you don't say which version of Windows you're running, but in 
> Folder options try turning off "Automatically search for network folders 
> and printers" if that doesn't work try turning off the SSDP service.

Ah yes - I forgot that when I get a new PC I always turn this setting 
off. Maybe that's why I haven't seen this problem before...

Post a reply to this message

> Hmm okay you don't say which version of Windows you're running,

XP 32 bit

> but in  Folder options try turning off "Automatically search for network 
> folders  and printers"

Did that already, as it looked liked a useless feature anyway :-)

> if that doesn't work try turning off the SSDP service.

Done it - will see what happens later at home...

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:21:57 -0000, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>> Hmm okay you don't say which version of Windows you're running,
>
> XP 32 bit
>
>> but in  Folder options try turning off "Automatically search for  
>> network folders  and printers"
>
> Did that already, as it looked liked a useless feature anyway :-)
>
>> if that doesn't work try turning off the SSDP service.
>
> Done it - will see what happens later at home...

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is UPnP

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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OK I think I've sorted it.  After more googling using some of the info given 
here I tracked down a copy of Filemon to see what explorer was doing.  It 
turns out that every time I tried to navigate or open a right click menu 
explorer was looking for "shell32.dll" in C:\Windows and failing to find it 
(it is is the system32 folder), and then it was looking for it in the root 
of G:\ (my personal network share).  I have no clue why it was doing this, 
but it was doing it mulitple times whenever I tried to do anything in an 
explorer window.  Obviously explorer only works in a single thread, so the 
call to open a non-existant network file was hanging the entire process for 
10 seconds or so.

I simply copied shell32.dll from C:\Windows\System32 into C:\Windows and now 
everything is zipping along like a new machine - even with the inaccessible 
network shares and printers!

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On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:51:26 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
>
> I simply copied shell32.dll from C:\Windows\System32 into C:\Windows

Not a good idea.

Try using ShellExView to see if there is a misconfigured shell extension,  
or a remnant of some malware.



-- 
FE

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