Slow opening of Word and Excel documents over network

My setup

Windows SBS, plus about 10 PCs with XP Home in a workgroup. A single 'F
drive' shared and mapped to the client XP Home PCs. Guest account enabled
and permitted to the share, so that all clients can open files like in a
simple peer-peer network. Network all works perfectly, except that randomly
when opening a Word of Excel document, it will hang and go 'not responding'
for about 30 seconds before then waking up and continuing as before. Happens
about 30% if the time, on small and large documents.

(Word and Excel 2000 BTW).

Tried everything I could find - disabling Oplocks, NTCaching etc - and
nothing makes a difference.

Then, changed the network share so that it is mapped and signed on using the
server's Administrator username and password, rather than guest. All of a
sudden, problem is gone.

Question is.......why?

Why should this solve the issue?

Also, since this does, can I make XP Home remember the password between
boot-ups???? At the moment, we have to re-enter the Administrator password
every morning to reconnect the F drive.

These search results may help,
Slow when accessing the file located on a server You experience slow performance when you open, save, close, delete, ... When you try to open a Microsoft Word file, you may receive the following error ...

Slow to open a file or browse because of mapping to disconnected drive ... For example, when a user tries to browse his department shared folder from Word, ...

This problem can be caused by ACT!8. The preload setting needs to be
changed from -stayrunning to -preload in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

I had the same problem, and found that the HP digital imaging monitor was
causing the long startup time. Once I got rid of it from the startup and
rebooted, the problem went away for my office docs.

Thanks for the answer. I had the same issue and removing the HP Digital image center solved it.

Thanks a lot for the answer. This seems to be working also for me.

We tried everything and finally decided since we are using Windows Server and it uses Internet Explorer a lot, we reset Internet Explorer to its default settings. Control panel to Internet Options. Then under Advanced, at the bottom, you can reset it to its default settings. We then did windows update, which had a bunch of updates to download and install. But, now, my computer is faster than it's ever been. I wish I had done this sooner!

For mapping the network share so you wouldn't have to enter username and password first you can create a logon script (.bat or someting else)

net use h: \\server\share /user:username password



With the slow opening of excel files it has something to do with the registry key

1. Close any instances of MS Office
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit then click OK.
3. Locate and then click to select the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0″
4. Nadat je de key hebt gespecifieerd in stap 3, point to New on the Edit menu, then click Key.
5. Type Excel, then press ENTER.
6. Select Excel, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
7. Type Security, and then press ENTER.
8. Select Security, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
9. Type FileValidation, and then press ENTER.
10. Select FileValidation, point to New on the Edit menu, then click DWORD Value.
11. Type EnableOnLoad, then press ENTER.
Note: The default value is 0 which disables the validation.
12. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.