Losing access to network share

Howdy guys. I'm really stuck on this one, and I haven't been able to find an answer as of yet anywhere I've looked. I'll try to be as detailed as possible:

I'm doing some work for a company who has 13 computers networked together. I just upgraded 3 of their computers to Windows 7 machines. One of them is being used as a database server, but is not running any sort of server software. It's a Win7 Pro 32 bit machine, with network access to the folders required for the database shared to "Everyone", and password protected sharing turned off. The problem computers are running Win XP SP3. Windows Firewall is turned off (which is required by one of the databases..I still don't understand exactly why), and I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials on them currently for antivirus.

Here's what's happening: Randomly, and for no reason that I can get to the bottom of, 3 of the machines lost connection to the shared network folder that the database uses. At one point, I narrowed down the issue to being something caused by Symantec Endpoint Protection (there was a bug in the version they had that could cause this problem) and the only way to fix it was by running Symantec's CleanWipe utility. This worked on 1 of the machines as a permanent fix. On the other two however, the issue continues to occur. If you try to launch the database program, it will lag and freeze windows explorer. If you try to access the shared folder from My Network Places, it will also lag up and freeze. Running CleanWipe again fixes the problem, but it apparently is only temporary.

Now the strange thing is: I can boot the computers in safe mode when this happens, and have full access to the network shares. When I boot back into windows afterwards, the access will go away again. I can also access shared folders on any other computer in the network, just not this particular one regardless of being in safe mode or not.

I really hope somebody can come up with a solution to this. It's been driving me crazy for weeks now. If I need to post any other information, I'll do what I can.

Maguscreed said:

It would seem to me something was missed by the norton removal tool on those two machines. Especially considering the problem does no occur in safe mode.
Speaking of safe mode have you tried running the clean tool in safe mode?

I have not, and that's not a bad idea. I'll give that a try and see if maybe it helps.

I did actually have to run the cleanwipe tool more than once on one of the other machines too before it would work, so maybe I just have to keep trying with it, who knows.

It sounds like a software conflict under the hood. You could run Process Explorer and look for dependencies and memory hogs. Or do it the long way, piecemeal: in MSConfig, take out half the startup applications at a time. Keep dividing by two until you narrow it down. But first, on the Services tab, check for anything Semantic remaining, or for that matter, anything unnecessary. You then can do the process of elimination there too. It may help to hide MS services first, though they might deserve a check over too.

Edit: Actually, the first thing I would do is drop MSSE and see what happens.

paul1149 said:

It sounds like a software conflict under the hood. You could run Process Explorer and look for dependencies and memory hogs. Or do it the long way, piecemeal: in MSConfig, take out half the startup applications at a time. Keep dividing by two until you narrow it down. But first, on the Services tab, check for anything Semantic remaining, or for that matter, anything unnecessary. You then can do the process of elimination there too. It may help to hide MS services first, though they might deserve a check over too.

Edit: Actually, the first thing I would do is drop MSSE and see what happens.

I've been wondering if it didn't have something to do with a running service or something as well, since it works fine in safe mode but not in normal mode. I've tried turning on and off some services and running programs and such, but not all. I guess really the only way might end up being process of elimination after all.

Still running into this issue. I can get things working, but it seems to be requiring multiple reboots of all of the PCs involved now, including the server itself. Does anybody at all have an idea as to what's causing the issue?

Further information: I've discovered that even clicking on any of the folders now in My Network Places that have been shared on the Server will cause explorer.exe to lag, and ultimately crash. So it isn't even if I try to open the folder, I can single click on it and the problem will occur. This was not the case before, so something else seems to have happened beyond the problem I was having with Symantec (though it still could have been the root cause, of course).

Any update on this issue?

I am still having the issue, yes, and it is still completely intermittent and I still haven't figured out exactly what's causing it. Fortunately, I'm upgrading all the PCs currently to Windows 7 and the problem is being resolved that way.

And yes, the computers there got hit by a pretty nasty virus, and also ended up having problems with the Symantec Endpoint Protection suite. The only workaround I could ever find for fixing the issue was to stop and restart certain network services (DHCP, DNS, Tcp/Ip, etc.), re-run the Norton removal tool, or load the computers in safe mode (because in safe mode they always had network share access, but in normal mode it would randomly be cut off), but even those other than safe mode didn't work every time.