Windows 7 hangs for a bit when accessing network drive

I can't seem to find a solution anywhere but the problem is. I have one central computer with windows 7 on it. When any computer in the house, whether it be my laptop with Vista, my desktop with XP, or my other desktop with Windows 7 connects to that network drive it hangs for a couple minutes before being able to open the file, or copy the file. This happens on all 3 machines accessing the network drive on the central computer.

This same result occurred when I setup my other desktop with windows 7 so that makes me think its something with windows 7 itself.

I do not have any firewall/antivirus programs installed, and I even turned off windows firewall and windows defender on the server that were all accessing.

Any ideas?

Strickt said:

I can't seem to find a solution anywhere but the problem is. I have one central computer with windows 7 on it. When any computer in the house, whether it be my laptop with Vista, my desktop with XP, or my other desktop with Windows 7 connects to that network drive it hangs for a couple minutes before being able to open the file, or copy the file. This happens on all 3 machines accessing the network drive on the central computer.

This same result occurred when I setup my other desktop with windows 7 so that makes me think its something with windows 7 itself.

I do not have any firewall/antivirus programs installed, and I even turned off windows firewall and windows defender on the server that were all accessing.

Any ideas?

I will bet when you set up win 7 and it asked you what type of network you are connecting to you said "home". Home (or more properly homegroup) uses a newer version of the IP protocol (IPv6). Homegroup is designed for newer hardware and win 7 machines only.

In mixed environments (especially with older hardware) IPv6 and homegroup sometimes have connectivity issues.

A quick test/workaround is to make a new connection using workgroup. If that fixes the problem you can disable IPv6 and kill homegroup.