win 7 network drive browsing SLOW - compared to XP

zdoe · 23 Mar 2011

is there some fundamental difference in how 7 conducts this bit of biz?

i'm getting gray hair with novatix explorer plus, that's my long time favorite file manager (remember norton navigator...!). in an attempt to resolve this, i'm currently running it at xp sp2 compatibility mode, but that does not seem to make a difference.

anyway - using the file copy/move button shortcuts on 7 will result in a LOOOOOOONG, like 10 minute freeze on the program before it shows the target path dialogue as it scans the network to find possible paths over the network (i assume).

this DOES have to do with the network component because if a setting for displaying network drives is unticked, the target location appears almost instantaneously.

if i browse the network with explorer.exe, i do not see as substantial a slow-down on 7, and in XP all is good with explorer plus.

what gives? any way to alter something to make this work?

zigzag3143 · 23 Mar 2011

zdoe said:

is there some fundamental difference in how 7 conducts this bit of biz?

i'm getting gray hair with novatix explorer plus, that's my long time favorite file manager (remember norton navigator...!). in an attempt to resolve this, i'm currently running it at xp sp2 compatibility mode, but that does not seem to make a difference.

anyway - using the file copy/move button shortcuts on 7 will result in a LOOOOOOONG, like 10 minute freeze on the program before it shows the target path dialogue as it scans the network to find possible paths over the network (i assume).

this DOES have to do with the network component because if a setting for displaying network drives is unticked, the target location appears almost instantaneously.

if i browse the network with explorer.exe, i do not see as substantial a slow-down on 7, and in XP all is good with explorer plus.

what gives? any way to alter something to make this work?

Are you by chance using homegroup for networking? homegroup uses IPv6 and it simply isnt designed for mixed OS networks with older hardware.

A simple test would be to make a new network using workgroup (which uses IPv4). If you problems resolves disable IPv6 and kill homegroup

Ken

zdoe · 23 Mar 2011

no, i'm NOT using homegroup, just plain olde IPv4.

**cluberti** · 23 Mar 2011

So the next questiion is, what APIs is this program using to display the data (obviously it has to do with network drives as well) that Win7's Explorer is not doing? Given this application's last update appears to be from 2004, and the company itself was purchased by Symantec in 2007, it's likely the code behind some of these things has changed and the application is using deprecated (or downright no longer maintained) APIs to do whatever it is it's doing with the network on browse, but given the state of the app I doubt any changes will ever be forthcoming (it's a dead product designed for XP and XP's network stack). I apologize I can't be more specific without knowing how that application works at a code level, but given it's age I doubt that it's going to work well on Windows 7 or even Vista without an update to how it was written. XP has more in common with NT4 than it does with Windows Vista or Windows 7, especially at the network layer. Running an application in a specific compatibility mode on Vista or Windows 7, like XP SP2, only changes the way the OS reports it's version to the application and some minor changes on how the program is loaded - it doesn't change the underlying OS architecture the app uses, for example networking or file API access to the network or the filesystem.

zdoe · 24 Mar 2011

of course i don't know the inner workings of the program are, and am aware that i may be beating a dead bush here. symantec should've developed it. they killed partition manager, too.

i was hoping that one of the compatibility modes would bring me back to 2004. meanwhile, it seems that:
- explorer++
- explorerXP
- xplorer2 lite

...may give me at least part of what i need. anybody try these? views?

on my cursory view xplorer2 lite seems the best. i realize that the key feature i need in a file manager is the ability to copy/move items to a path that's typed, not tree-navigated to. so my current main gripe on xplorer2 lite is that i can't alter the display font.