Is checking a network drive too fast? Or is finding it on your computer taking forever?
Is checking a network drive too fast? Or is finding it on your computer taking forever?
I just installed Windows 10 version 21H2. It takes about 12 seconds to find my network connection. Adding four more seconds is needed to see which drives show up and then open them. On my other setup with an older system, everything was super fast when I checked the network and opened files. This old system has a 10Gigabyte card. I followed all the basic steps that people recommended on many websites before me. I also took out the built-in 10Gig NIC from the motherboard and put in a new PCIe one instead. I upgraded the driver software for my network card from version 2.1.21 to 3.1.6, which is an older model part number. This was a complete clean install, not just replacing parts on the same computer. I checked that both SMBv1 and SMBv2 are turned off because those might be causing trouble. I looked at all the network settings like packet size and other options. Honestly, copying files from my PC to this old server feels pretty slow now compared to before. Even though using a 1GB card makes copies about 90MB/s fast, everything else still seems stuck or slow when it comes to detecting the network and opening things up. I made sure no single user apps were running in the background and even tried turning off some Windows services to see if anything was blocking me. I also updated my BIOS and checked driver versions again just to make sure nothing changed. This is really frustrating because my old server 2012 R2 is officially unsupported by Microsoft, while the new desktop version of 1809 LTSC feels stuck too. I don't know what to do next. It seems like Microsoft might have a broken network stack in Windows 10 21H2 that causes these same problems as they did on Server 2019. The only thing changing is how fast copies go from my PC to the old server, which went from not stalling at all to just being very slow (around 200MB/s to 240MB/s). A side note: I checked many forums posts and didn't find a fix for this problem. One post from about a year ago said it was solved there. [SOLVED] - Copying files to Win Server 2019 stalls repeatedly ?. That computer was on Server 2012 R2 until recently. Copying big files from PCs on the network into internal drives would speed fluctuate wildly between 1.1GB/s and 120Mbs/s with an average of over 500MB/s for large files. I even had a 2-bay USB-C storage enclosure with copies going to it, but that problem also wasn't fixed on this forum. Turns out Microsoft reinvented the network stack in Server 2019 which is what causes these issues there. There is still no known solution yet either. It wasn't actually an issue with LSO settings even though I thought those were good at the time.
I'm hanging out with Server 2012 R2 because it's getting past its support life. I don't want to stay stuck on version 1809 LTSC for my desktops forever either. Why am I feeling this way? It's not really my fault (full disclosure). But there seems to be some stuff holding things back. What is that stuff?
I don't really get what problem you're talking about. Do you have to take the network apart and put it together a lot? When you do, figuring out which part works takes time? If you just connect up ten times a day, 15 seconds isn't that long, but if you keep doing this every single time, it feels annoying. Can you tell me exactly what's wrong? Is the physical connection taking too long to start working, or does the network setting (like "nic showing up") take forever? If I could run a command in powershell when the device is broken down, that would help see how the NIC reacts right now. If it takes way too long for the NIC to say "I'm ready," you can check your Windows event logs for signs of trouble. This might be because of the driver or the operating system's network stuff, so maybe there isn't much we can fix about it. On the other hand, if the NIC says "ready" fast but doesn't work after that, you could try using Wireshark to see if anything is actually trying to talk over that interface at that exact moment.
Thanks for getting back to me! Maybe I sound annoying because I've used a responsive OS for more than ten years now. If an OS is stuck or not responding, it really bugs me no matter how many times I try to reconnect. Since I check in about three or four times every single day, this frustration can get bad if I have to do the same thing with 10 other people who hold the exact same view as me. I think they will soon ask me to take them back to version 1809.
To me, this is like a flat tire. Sure, it's just one of many tires on a car, but if one is flat, my handling gets worse, so I put more air in it and go to the shop to fix it properly. That's how it feels with Windows 1809. Sorry if my comparison is too long or weird; I set up a task that pings yahoo.com in a startup script. It says "Request timed out" until the network shows up, but the ncsi indicator (the globe icon) tells me it isn't connected. If I try to manually map a drive while it's not connected, I get an error saying the name doesn't exist. This also makes my VPN fail because of the timeout. My VPN connects through a login script, so the PCs are always on the network just like this. We need this setup because people work from home all day.
I guess this problem is happening with Server 2019 and up too. Microsoft kept changing things again, and since then it has never been responsive. I've switched back to Server 2012 R2 for my server just because of that. But the real issue isn't just slow connections; our infrastructure uses 10G networks. On version 1809, copy speeds range from 700MB/s to 1.2GB/s. With 21H2, those numbers drop down to around 230MB/s. Since a lot of big files are moved often, this really slows things down. On Server 2019, file copies sometimes stop working completely and drop to zero b/s for long periods. Version 21H2 is worse than that but still not as good as 1809. Even when the connection works, it takes several seconds to discover mapped drives before they show up in a disconnected state. Also, opening network files feels much slower here. On Server 1809, a huge spreadsheet opens in eight seconds; on 21H2 it takes twenty-three seconds.
There are three registry tweaks I tried for that, but I'm not hopeful about them since I checked them on Server 2019 and they didn't help essentially. Basically, everything with the network seems to be affected: slow to connect, then even slower once connected. The NIC drivers have been upgraded from version 2.0.18 to 3.1.6, but none of those changes made a difference either. Telemetry has been significantly reduced too. There are hundreds of firewall rules blocking internet connections; it's basically a whitelist that only lets certain programs like email and browsers through. I couldn't find any event log entries except for OpenVPN, which logs an error every time it successfully connects—it's done that since forever.
I'll try the PS command you mentioned and send you my results.