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Why is only 1 laptop opening/saving files slowly on a peer-to-peer network?

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They have a Dell desktop PC as one computer with all the files and is used by someone. Win XP, 3 GB. Hardwired LAN. This is the only computer cabled and is the only desktop computer.

Netgear Wired, Wireless Router

One other person brings in her Toshiba Satellite L675 laptop [Win 7 Home Premium, MS Office 2007, 4 GB, clean and fast] to work on. Almost all documents (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat) open and save slowly; 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes. Usually Excel doc will open almost as fast as expected.

I had her do the same thing at her home WiFi network. She says documents open and save at a normal speed.

Also, Dell Inspiron, Win XP, MS Office 2010
& Thinkpad, Win XP, MS Office 2007
& Other laptop (haven’t had my hands on it yet)
Anyway, all of the other computers open, save and close documents accessed on the desktop quickly.

Step 1: Worked on desktop pc
Added 2 GB RAM to desktop to bring it to 3 GB. Upgraded all Dell Drivers and BIOS. This cut the file access time from the Toshiba in half; it used to take twice as long as noted above.

Step 2: Worked on Toshiba laptop
System is plenty powerful. I upgraded the BIOS and the drivers including one for the RealTek Wired & Wireless Network adapter. This did not make a difference in file access times.

I see that the Netgear router is due for an upgrade but I figure that if 3 out of 4 laptops do not have this problem then that is not the problem.

I appreciate any assistance.

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Clarifications

In reply to Why is only 1 laptop opening/saving files slowly on a peer-to-peer network?

Clarifications

I think you’ll find your answer here is the Win 7 OS

In reply to Why is only 1 laptop opening/saving files slowly on a peer-to-peer network?

All of the systems that work OK have XP which uses a different Networking Protocol to Vista or 7.

I think you’ll find that because 7 Uses a HomeGroup as apposed to the open Peer to Peer LAN that XP uses this is your issue. 7 is attempting a brute Force approach to access the XP LAN and you need to setup the XP LAN to suit the 7 System.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/share-files-and-printers-between-windows-7-and-xp/

Col

Problem is still there…

In reply to Why is only 1 laptop opening/saving files slowly on a peer-to-peer network?

I wanted to verify that everything was done according to that article before I replied… and it is. I just didn’t do any sharing of the Win 7 resources because that never happens and that laptop goes home every night. All the other settings are done.

So, I turned off the WiFi and connected the laptop straight to the router to see if the problem existed that way. And I was surprised: 1) It says it’s only connected locally, 2) but it will not see the other network devices that it sees with WiFi, and 3) there were no IP addresses in the ipv4 and ipv6 protocols. It didn’t help to disable/enable or repair.

I have to rush when I’m there so I’ll go back and do the router firmware upgrade and reinstall the TCP/IP protocols. I’ll do a little more looking into the problem and I am open to your suggestions. Thanks…

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