I have a small office network. Because of location of the offices, we connect workstations through several switches. We have a windows 2003 server. We are not using domains or active directory. The network is primarily used to access the internet. We use a Fortinet Content filter/firewall. DHCP is provided by the Fortinet device. The server is mainly used for storage and a centralized accounting database.
I have one user setup so that her documents folder is actually on the server and her workstation has a mapped drive to that folder. The server is setup to mirror it’s two drives for redundancy.
Occasionally, that user will experience a situation where she will open a file or create a new file most commonly with MS Publisher and when she attempts to save the file will get an error message that she is out of disk space or the dreaded hourglass and cannot save to her documents folder on the server. I can go to the mapped drive and see the folders there but cannot save the file.
When this happens it seems to cause a slow down of all traffic on the network. The only way I have found to correct the problem is to turn off all switches and internet connections and then power them back on. Once all connections are restored, the file can be saved. It’s not necessary to reboot any of the workstations or the server.
It’s as if something goes into some sort of loop.
The switches are unmanaged and are a combination of 3com and Netgear devices.
Any help in this situation would be greatly appreciated.