Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

[Carol Haynes]

Haven't had a problem with 7 and Vista.

-Darwin (January 19, 2010, 09:09 AM)

To clarify - I haven't had any issues running a mixture of XP, Vista and 7 on the same network and if anything I find Win 7 accesses network shares rather faster than my XP boxes. I have certainly had fewer headaches with a mixed network than I ever had with XP only and simple sharing.

If you want to share with everybody on a network you don't need to use password protected account access in Windows 7 (or Vista) instead of specifying individual users just specify "Everybody" as the user and then is gives open access to all computers on the LAN to that folder.

[4wd]

Ditto for me, WRT folder sharing with XP. It was one checkbox but it only worked about 30% of the time, and this was when networking three XP machines. Drove me nuts. Haven't had a problem with 7 and Vista.

-Darwin (January 19, 2010, 09:09 AM)

Guess it's one of those YMMV things, I never had a problem with Simple File Sharing under XP either at home or on LAN night.

"Slow to access on non-Win7 machines" - in which way?

-f0dder (January 19, 2010, 08:50 AM)

The initial connection, here XP to W7 takes approx. 30-40 seconds to list available shares,  XP to XP takes around 5.

Connection from W7 to XP is fast, no problems there.

EDIT: I should add, logged in as same admin user on both machines.

[Shades]

As discussed  in a previous DC thread, it might be a good idea to designate one PC in the LAN as the 'Master Browser' and disable this functionality on all other (Windows) PC's in the LAN.

In each Windows version (2000, XP, 2003) the default setting for 'Master Browser' is enabled. When combining such PC's in a LAN each one continuously tries to become the 'Master Browser' introducing long waiting times for initial connections. My network only has one Master Browser and I cannot tell the difference between a network drive/share/UNC and a local drive when accessing folders. Directories and files show up instantly.

Now I suspect that the networking client from Win7 is setup the same way with regards to the 'Master Browser' setting, I could be wrong as I don't have Win7 to test it myself.

[4wd]

That would only apply to Domains though, wouldn't it?

Not Workgroups which is how my network is set up.

Just as a matter of interest, for the IsDomainMaster regkey:
2 XP machines = FALSE
W7 machine = key not present

MaintainServerList = AUTO on all machines

[Carol Haynes]

No - MS seems to treat Workgroups as extremely simple domain type systems in practice (hence the reference to domain MSHOME in the last article which is actually the default workgroup name in XP).

Backup the settings and give that method a try and let us know if it makes any difference.

[shobazi]

I have been installed windows 7 many times in my laptop - but i never faced such type of problems..

[4wd]

Backup the settings and give that method a try and let us know if it makes any difference.

-Carol Haynes (January 20, 2010, 02:26 AM)

It's now down to around 15-25 seconds but added the need to enter a username/password to connect, (even for an Everyone share) - so it got removed, (the last thing I want on LAN night is to be bombarded with: "I can't access that directory!" or "What's the user/password?", when I'm busy trying to get that last enemy in OFDR or CoD-MW2.

It's also not just on initial share listing, if I go into a shared folder and then return to the parent, (\\computername), it'll take the same amount of time to list all the shares again - I thought it would have cached them?

EDIT: Just as a matter of interest, could someone using DOpus on Win7 tell me if the "Share with" context menu works?
Here it works under Explorer but not DOpus but as yet I haven't looked into possible causes.

[Carol Haynes]

[/b] added the need to enter a username/password to connect, (even for an Everyone share)

-4wd (January 20, 2010, 07:00 PM)

That is probably a setting in the Network and Sharing Center in Windows 7 which is set by default- Just turn off password protected sharing.

[4wd]

Just turn off password protected sharing.

-Carol Haynes (January 21, 2010, 03:58 AM)

It was turned off on both Public and Home or Work, (and still is).  Maybe I'll have to do a Install in Place, (can you still do that with Win7), and start from near scratch.

On another note:

Win7's Power Options->Balanced settings, I've changed the Sleep time to 1 hour, (30 minutes is just too short), and it goes into Sleep after 60 minutes of me doing nothing on the mouse/keyboard......but the majority of the time it does it regardless of what the PC is doing.

ie. I'll start a number of video encodes to be done overnight, CPU load is always 50-90% doing these.  Next morning I'll boot up the PC from Sleep to find it start to continue doing the encodes.

I always thought that Windows only went into Sleep mode when there was minimal CPU activity, (eg. 0-10%) ?

[Carol Haynes]

I always thought that Windows only went into Sleep mode when there was minimal CPU activity, (eg. 0-10%) ?

-4wd (January 21, 2010, 05:35 PM)

AIUI it has always been to do with keyboard/mouse activity.

There is a utility on DC somewhere (Skrommel?) to simulate mouse movements every few seconds to avoid this.

UPDATE:

See LowToSleep at https://www.donation...ndex.html#LowToSleep

[f0dder]

I always thought that Windows only went into Sleep mode when there was minimal CPU activity, (eg. 0-10%) ?

-4wd (January 21, 2010, 05:35 PM)

Nope, depends on user input activity (keyboard/mouse, like Carol mentioned). It's possible to programmatically disable this, though, rather than sending mouse input events. Most media players do this to avoid sending the OS to sleep while watching a DVD