** SOLVED ** Right clicking an Office file on a Windows Share is slow

[pwhooftman]

Well, where to put this strange problem? XP, Office or Network related Forum. All three seem to be involved somehow.

What gives?

I have a few large Excel files on

a) a share on a Win XP SP2 desktop

B) a share on a WIn Vista desktop

c) a share on a Ubuntu 6.06 desktop

When i mean large, i mean ~75Mb

When i work on my laptop (Win Xp SP2, 1Gb Ram, 1,86 GHz), i can access all shares just fine. But when i right click such a large Excel file on the XP or Vista share and click 'Properties', my laptop becomes unresponsive for about a minute. Then, at last, the properties are shown. In the Taskmanager, on the LAN tab, it shows that my LAN connection is swamped at 70% for a whole minute. Sniffing the network traffic learns that the entire contents of the file is being transferred through the network to my laptop!

Just to see the properties...

However, when i right click the same file on a Ubuntu share, the properties come up instantly.

When i right click other large files on the XP/Vista shares (like *.iso of *.avi files), bingo, properties pop up instantly.

When i right click the large Excel files on the Xp/Vista share from a Win 2003 server (without office installed), voila, properties show up instantly.

So why is the whole Excel file transferred from the share on the remote computer through the network to me by just right clicking it for properties?

I'm convinced this behaviour adds to slow file share performance in general. For example, if i want to copy such a large excel file from the XP or Vista share to my local drive , it takes 10-20 seconds for even the copy transfer progress window (with the flying envelopes) to come up. I bet, the file is already being dragged over the network once before copying does it again.

And why only for Excel (e.g. Office) files?

i'm stumped.

Edited April 14, 2008 by pwhooftman

[pwhooftman]

Solved!

I found the solution in

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/...2177991033.aspx

In this document, recommendation no 4. describes exactly my problem. Turns out Windows Explorer collects extensive information about an Office file, even before opening it.

I made the 3 registry adjustments mentioned in http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;829700

Because vista premium doesn't have the 4th registry mentioned, i did a search and found that in Vista, i had to create the key \HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer , and put a DWORD EnforceShellExtensionSecurity with a value of 1 in it.

Reboot, and now properties of the file come up in a second (instead of 50)

In Vista, there is still a peak in network traffic when i left click the file. When i left-click, a green bar appears in the address bar of Vista Windows Explorer. This is when details of the file are gathered to be shown at the bottom 'Detail Pane' of Vista Windows Explorer. Simultaniously, there is a peak in traffic. See attachment.

The Detail Pane can be disabled if needed.