Fixed, Likes to run in Full authentication, not 100 full duplex.

[elkinm]

I tried watching a movie over the network as the system that has it is being used. Well when I tried opening it with WMP it just hung trying to run the file with the hard drive light blinking regularly. After a minute or so I closed WMP but found that the explorer window I used to find the movie was stuck.

I tried opening more explorer windows and they all were basically useless slow but somewhat useful unlike the first window still.

Surprisingly the CPU usage in basically zero unlike 99% if explorer acts like this.

This is were I am now. I have several explorer windows open all showing as not responding and I cannot close any of them as it would kill explorer and I currently have too many windows open to deal with the mess of restarting it.

The question is how I can maybe get explorer to respond and even find out why this happened. Or at least how to stop or kill the explorer window without killing the desktop and taskbar.

If that is not possible and I do have to kill it, is there a simple way to run the taskbar and desktop separately so I don't loose them at a time like this.

Thanks

 

[elkinm]

Here are the directions to set separate processed for the desktop and taskbar. I guess I should have searched first.

I still want to somehow stop explorer from being hung or at least close the hung window without killing the process. I think it should be possible as CPU usage is 0 so it is not truly hung.

I obviously still would like to know why it hung and what the network had to do with it.

Thanks again.

EDIT, The process fix is for Win 2000 in XP put the same Dword in "explorer/advanced in the registry.

 

[elkinm]

After over an hour I can honestly say that explorer is responding again but for files still take very long to play. I tried playing some smaller files and they took some time but not that long.

Is it possible that windows is trying to cache the files locally before playing the video for some reason as this never happened before.

 

[elkinm]

It seems file playback is also extremely slow as well folder browsing so for some reason the network is very slow.

Anybody have any ideas.

 

[elkinm]

I rebooted both systems. The thing is that the network is still slow for some reason. Even small files take some time to load and they cannot play smoothly.

 

[elkinm]

Fixed for now.

My last change is that my netwok adapters were set to force 100 full duplex. When I changed it to full authentication it started working normaly again. It still connects at 100.

Why would full authentication work better. Wouldn't 100 full duplex reduce some overhead?

 

[networkman]

"full authentication"? 😕

Do you mean Auto-Negotiation ?

If so, then the auto feature will allow for the speed and duplex to change depending on the conditions in the connection. It's possible that one or both sides have problems with 100 Full, and so communicate at 100 Half when in Auto mode.

Another possibility is best described thus:

Unexpected consequences (and why there's no better alternative)

This sometimes has unexpected results, however. Many people think that if they set a switch port (or interface) to a specific mode (say 100Mb/full-duplex), and then plug in a workstation, it should automatically sync up with the switch port and configure itself to 100Mb/full-duplex. They are then surprised when the workstation settles into 100Mb/half-duplex, and their network starts experiencing a very high number of errors. The problem is that most new interfaces shipping today (including most switch interfaces) use the more robust auto-negotiation standard. As stated before, auto-negotiating is an active system, requiring data be sent by both sides. If auto-negotiation is turned off at the switch, any host plugged into it will send its auto-negotiation information and wait for the switch to send its own auto-negotiation information back. When the switch fails to do so (because auto-negotiation is disabled), the host assumes the interface is not capable of full-duplex. It falls back on the passive means used to detect speed, and sets itself up at the correct speed, but in half-duplex mode.

 

[spidey07]

Networkman,

Just a quick clarification on auto-negotation (and for everybody else as well)

It has nothing to do with the conditions of the link or the cable and will not change once the link is up. Both sides of the link send in their link pulse signal a "this is the max I can do" and as far as I know there is no acknoledgement.

So you can take a cat3 cable and the link will probably come up as 100/full on both sides, but it will perform for crap. Split pairs and other cabling baddies won't affect the autonegotiation as well since it is just a rudimentary link pulse signal saying "I can do 100/full" and the other side says "I can do 100/full", from there the driver decides what to do.

And what you described is one of the most common errors in networking and leads to severe performance problems (it reduces performance by a factor of 100 or more).

 

[elkinm]

Thanks, it is Auto-Negotiation. So I'll be only using auto-negotiation from now on.

 

[nweaver]

Autoneg used to suck (in my experience) but has been improved alot in the last few years. We used to have a "100 Full" Hard setting on all hardware (it was critical) and then we changed back as things got much better. Duplex Mismatch is probably the biggest reason for a slow connection.

 

[Boscoh]

Yeah...that was just a few years ago and still happens now, but not as much. You'd get two different vendors, one for your NIC and one for the switch, or two switches from different vendors (the most common, I thought), and turn autonegotiation on and watch them negotiate down to 10base-half. Or not negotiate at all.

I saw that not too long ago actually. Uplinked a Cisco 2970 to a Dell 5212 and they wouldnt autonegotiate the link. I never use auto between switches anyway, they were just setup like that since they were both right out of the box.

Something so easy would be hard to screw up...or so one would think.