Problem with windows 2003 - not sure where to look

[patrick24601]

On my home internal network I used a spare PC (1.34GHz Athlon, 1G of memory, 2 internal drives, 1 external USB drive) to do a clean Window 2003 Server standard install. I am all workgroups - no domain. I have applied all of the windows updates to it. I have also created a share (and given open permissions) on each of three drives so I can backup to it from each of my families machines on the same network. All of the machines are in the same workgroup, and I can see and map the shares OK. This is all on a 100M internal network. Everything is DHCP from a linksys.

However whenever I try any backups or any large copy/paste operations I get timeous from the server. I get error messages about writes failing due to media timing out. This has happened when I've tried to backup to any of the drives.

Whenever I try this from machine to machine (without the server) it works OK. I can run backups from my machine to my wifes machine without a problem. It just happens when I am copying to the server. And it does not take long - about 5 minutes for it to happen.

Any pointers would be appreciated. Happy 4th.

 

[Rilex]

First, take a look at the System Event Log on the server. See if there are any disk or MrxSmb errors. You need to find out if this is a network related issue or if you have a bad/failing disk.

 

[patrick24601]

System even log (all logs as a MOF) only show informationals for the most part. In the system event log there are a couple of 'Error' for printer drivers but that is it. Pretty clean logs.

 

[Rilex]

Then it sounds like it is probably network-related.

Start simple:
Update server NIC drivers
Replace the network cable between the server and switch
Replace the NIC in the server
See if using a crossover cable between the server and a client works