Accessing mapped drives through router freezes my new pc

[couzin2000]

Hi everyone,

ok, here's a description of the problem. I have a workstation that I just finished installing Windows XP SP2 on. I hooked up this machine to a router. On the other end of the router is a less powerful pc that acts as a media server, and that machine also has XP SP2 on it. When I sat at my workstation, I went into Windows Explorer, went into Network, Microsoft Network, and found my media server there. I have 5 drives in the server, 4 of which are shared at the root. I saw the drives so I mapped the drives of my server to my Workstation, to simplify things.

Then I opened a window to one of the drives (drive P:). After 3 seconds of being "in" the drive, my workstation froze. Forever.

I had to hard boot to get somewhere. When I reboot, the workstation is fine. Then I go back to the drive -- big mistake. It froze again. Actually, now it does it every time.

I checked that this wasn't a power issue, and actually replaced the power supply (my screen shut itself off a few times when the workstation froze). Checked every connection, and everything seems in order. The server is still running, and hasn't stopped since, except when I rebooted it myself for maintenance.

Things I haven't checked yet: the network cables, and my network cards (both DLINK DFE-530TXs on a DLINK DI-624). Both machines are also connected to an APC power conditioner, so I don't think it has to do with power.

What it looks like is some sort of issue with the network card's driver, which is the one that was included in Windowx XP (not in SP2). I am going to change the driver to DLINK's own, but I'd like to know if anyone has ever encountered this.

Basically, as soon as I access a networked drive, the machine freezes.

Here's a few things that happened: I replaced the workstation's 768M of DDR RAM with 2Gigs of dual-channel DDR RAM. When I did that, the time it took to freeze was considerably longer, and I was able to, for a while, access the network. I also cut-pasted the data from that media drive to another, so I could try and access another drive, but that drive also showed the same problem.

Here's a description of my machines, how they're setup together:

Workstation:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2Mb L2)

ASUS A8V

DLINK DFE 530TX

ATI Radeon 9800Pro

2Gb Dual-Chan DDR400RAM

Generic USB/Firewire PCI card

Sound Blaster Audigy

1HD: Seagate SATA 320Gb 16Mb Cache

Server:

AMD Barton 2500+

ASUS A7V133

512Mb DDR333 RAM

ATI A-I-W Radeon 9600 PRO

Creative Extigy

Generic PCI soundcard

DLINK DFE 530TX

5HDs: 4 Maxtors (80G, 80G, 120G, 300G) all 16Mb cache, all ATA133; 1 Seagate 200G 16Mb Cache ATA133

Windows XP SP2 installed on 120G (partitioned in 4)

DLINK DI-624 router (both pcs are hardwired with CAT5e RJ-45)

The drive I tried to access was the 120G, but in a partition where there is no installed program or OS.

Someone let me know what you think of this. I think it's a memory leak in the network card driver, or its a bad network card. What do you think?

Couzin2000