Server = Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.
Clients = Windows XP SP2 with all updates.

Problem:
From time to time, it takes Excel 60 to 120 seconds to open a file on the
server.
When this happens, all other users will experience this delay, i.e. in the
mean time they can't open a file.
It looks that the server has to work on the first request,
and once this is cleared, it can process to the next one.

Symptoms:
- On opening files on the local computer, there will never be a delay.
- When you are the only one working in Excel in the network, no problems.
- The problem starts, when 2 or more clients are working with Excel.
- We have Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.1.4 with patches.
Turning on or off the Antivirus, either on the client or on the server, or
both, makes no difference.
- Clearing XLStart on a client has no effect.
- Disabling digital signature on lanmanserver and/or lanmanworkstation on
server has no effect.

We only experience this problem since 1 or 2 months.

It's an extremely annoying situation.
Thanks in advance to who could solve this situation.

I'm not going to have an absolute answer for you, but to get an answer from
someone I think they are going to need more information about your network
setup.

What kind of horsepower does the server have? CPU model, amount of RAM,
available free disk space.

How much of SBS 2003 have you installed on the server? Is it also running
things like SQL Server, ISAS, etc? i.e., What services is it providing? How
many clients?

Do the client machines have their own copy of Office/Excel on them or are
you trying to run shared copy from the server? That could cause a bottleneck.

Leave the anti-virus on, as much of a hog as Symantec's product is, better
and safer to not cut back on security matters.

Hopefully the answers to those questions will give someone else more
familiar with SBS 2003 than I am enough to work with.

"Pierre" wrote:

Server = Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.
Clients = Windows XP SP2 with all updates.

Problem:
From time to time, it takes Excel 60 to 120 seconds to open a file on the
server.
When this happens, all other users will experience this delay, i.e. in the
mean time they can't open a file.
It looks that the server has to work on the first request,
and once this is cleared, it can process to the next one.

Symptoms:
- On opening files on the local computer, there will never be a delay.
- When you are the only one working in Excel in the network, no problems.
- The problem starts, when 2 or more clients are working with Excel.
- We have Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.1.4 with patches.
Turning on or off the Antivirus, either on the client or on the server, or
both, makes no difference.
- Clearing XLStart on a client has no effect.
- Disabling digital signature on lanmanserver and/or lanmanworkstation on
server has no effect.

We only experience this problem since 1 or 2 months.

It's an extremely annoying situation.
Thanks in advance to who could solve this situation.