Windows 7: Office 2010 Slow To Show "Open" Dialog Box When Connected To Network

Hello all,

Frustrating problem: All Office 2010 apps require a 45 second delay to produce an "open" or "save as" dialog box when the computer is connected to a LAN (wireless or wired, domain or workgroup). When the computer is NOT connected to a LAN (wireless or wired, domain or workgroup), then Office 2010 "open" or "save as" dialog boxes open normally (and quickly).

I suspect a network polling function internal to MS Office is at fault.

This is NOT the infamous mapped network drive problem associated with Office 2007/2010. There are no mapped drives (nor have there ever been) on the PC, although there might exist a related solution. Additionally, there is no 45 second delay when opening a file by double-clicking on the file itself which will launch the application.

Other information:

1. PC runs Windows 7 Pro 32 bit - PC is a relatively new Lenovo T400 laptop, all updates from Lenovo and MS installed, running clean and nicely otherwise, no spyware, no viruses, no previous software or hardware issues requiring assistance. Event log is clean.

2. Absolutely fresh installation of Office 2010 Pro Plus (MS Action Pack)

3. Running Office apps in safe mode does not alter problem behavior (ie, "windword.exe /safe" or use CTRL key and double-click to launch app)

4. Running Windows 7 in safe mode with networking and then subsequently testing Office apps is not possible: "license not able to validate" issue. This is a known problem and is not related to the slow dialog box response behavior.

5. A desktop PC with the same MS Office 2010 installation, same volume license key, on the same network does NOT produce this problem.

6. Full uninstall, reboot, and re-install of Office 2010 does not alleviate problem

7. Disabling ALL startup items and services (including, of course, ALL Lenovo management software) does not alleviate problem

8. SMB v2 bug is not the problem: ie, disabling mrxsmb20 service does not alleviate symptoms.

9. Disabling "Client for Microsoft Networks", "QOS Packet Scheduler", "Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver" (and Responder), and "Printer and File Sharing for MS Networks" in the network adapter properties does not alleviate the symptoms.

10. Using Sysinternals Registry Monitor, I was able to determine that Office apps evaluate certain properties of your Internet Explorer settings before attempting to launch the "open" or "save as" dialog box. Altering the way intranets are detected, for example, does not alleviate the symptoms.

11. Turning off Antivirus software (Avira Personal) does not alleviate the issue.

This issue is causing a huge loss of work efficiency. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.


Sincerely,

Rick

Have you tried blocking all network activity with some Internet Security package for those Office applications, which do not use Internet?

Internal Exchange server? 2008 R2?
Local Office? VLAN subnets or single subnet?

Brady and Neutron,

Thank you for replying, however, I think I found the solution to the problem. All of your suggestions are reasonable. I, too, thought of networking issues-- but the problem occurred across a variety of network types (workgroups, domains, wired, wireless, server 2003, server 2008, etc). Important note: I travel with the latop to customer sites.

A few evenings ago I created a new user profile with local administrative rights and logged on. Office 2010 apps in this new profile did NOT exhibit the problem behavior. I logged off of that profile, and logged back onto my "normal" profile where I found that the problem persisted-- all Office 2010 apps took 45 seconds or more to produce an "Open" or "Save As" dialog box when connected to a network.

I transferred all of my data and settings to the new profile, and deleted the old profile. This resolution to the problem seems satisfactory. Unfortunately I will never know what caused the issue. I suspect some user-specific network setting or registry entry was causing Office apps to poll network resources, producing a long delay before a "open" or "save as" dialog box was produced.

Sincerely,

Rick

I experienced a similar issue, searched the web, and found this thread.
It inspired me to the process described below, leading to a solution which may be helpful to others.

First, I'll specify the problem as I experienced it:
On a Windows 7 machine working in MS Office 2003 or Office 2010 (I have both installed) I tried to display the Open Dialog box for a specific folder. It took ages (=45 seconds) to populate this folder. A further annoyance was that the was no hour glass or other sign of life during the 45 seconds. The folder is on a network drive.

Interestingly, the Open Dialog box opened promptly when I was working from a Windows XP machine.

So, I took a copy of the folder (to avoid annoying other network users) and systematically tried to trace down whether it helped to remove any subfolders or files from the problematic folder.

This process lead me to the culprit: A shortcut called 'Desktop', which referred to
"\\SomePC\c$\Documents and Settings\xxx\Desktop"

This file obviously generates a timeout problem in MS Office under Windows 7, but not in Windows XP.

So this is a way to solve a problem that seemed most mysterious at first. Hopefully this information can help others.