Why is File Explorer sometimes slow?

I have several machines in my home network. One of the machines is the household server and one of its drives is accessed as the Z: drive on the other machines. On a fairly regular basis, when using File Explorer on one of the other machines, when Z: is clicked on, it takes 30+ seconds for the files to appear.

I am fairly certain that this issue is with the server because the other day, while using a File Explorer-like program on an Android phone, accessing the Z: drive was very slow.

My question is this: Is there some setting I can adjust on the server to resolve this issue? Not sure if it matters, but I have the server configured to shutdown every night at around 1:00 am and turn back on at around 8:00 am. (Okay - call me silly, but why waste electricity?...)

If another computer (the Android phone here) has the same problem, the issue seems to be in the server or maybe the network.
As a first troubleshoting step I would try to open the shared folder from the server itself (sitting at its keyboard) and see if it opens normally. You could try to run a full disk scan to look for possible HD damage. Also check the network connections for some loose cables and the like.

Apart from the delay, does the files appear normally and can you use them without any further problems?

GRoston said:

Not sure if it matters, but I have the server configured to shutdown every night at around 1:00 am and turn back on at around 8:00 am. (Okay - call me silly, but why waste electricity?...)

It shouldn't be relevant normally, except if the server happens to be off at the time you want it and it wakes up to serve the request. The delay might be the power-on time, if it happens only once per day.

As an aside, and going totally off-topic, night time seems like the best time to schedule automatic backups, if you use them (and you definitely should) be sure the server powers-off after completing them.

Alejandro85 - thanks for the ideas. The server does not have a keyboard, but when I use remote desktop, everything seems fine. Fairly recently I ran chkdsk and everything seemed fine. Once I have access to the files, they appear/act perfectly normally. I do not believe that there are network issues since there are no other similar issues on the LAN. Weird...

I would ask then a further question:
Does the delay happens only the first time you access the share?
Does it happens at every file operation?
Does it happens in other computers? IE, when you access the shares of computers other than the server's.

My next guess is that it has something to do with authentication and Active Directory/domain login, if applicable. It could happen that Windows has some problems checking your user/password when you first connect, be it because of a closed port that should be open or a disabled service, or even (if the server is Windows 10 or later) it might try login with a "Microsoft Account" while it should be a local login. Just a bunch of guesses.
All of those would point to configuration errors on the server.

Replies:

• Yes, first time only (but not every first time)
• It happens whenever I use File Explorer to access the directory or try to reopen a file (say, via Excel)
• Yes, it does seem to happen from other machines (but I do not use them regularly to access the server)

Not sure which account I use via File Explorer. Using remote desktop (and note that all machines are Windows 7), I see that there are two accounts on the server, the Admin account and my account. I do not have a domain configured, but both machines belong to the same workgroup.

If there is a configuration error, what might it be?