Vista: very slow to copy large files

[chicagotech]

Symptom: When you copy large files to/from other computers in the LAN, the copy process is slower than expected.

Resolutions: 1. Disable the Windows Explorer Navigation Pane. To do that, Click Start, and then click Computer. In the top menu, select Organize, Layout, and then click Navigation Pane.

2. Map a network drive to the folder that contains the files that you want to copy. To do this, you may have two options.

1) Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Map Network Drive. Type the path of the network folder in the Folder box, and then click Finish. For example, type \\computer_name\shared_folder_name, and then click Finish.

2) Start a command prompt, and then map the drive by using net use command, for example, Net use H: \\chicagotech/shared, where H: is the letter of the drive that you want to assign to the shared resource.

3. Use Robocopy or xcopy. For example, type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER: Robocopy source_path destination_path file_name

4. Disable the automatic adjustment for the TCP window size on the network. To do this, follow these steps: Click Start , type cmd and press Enter. Type netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

5. Disabling Remote Differential Compression. To do this, open Control Panel>Add Remove Programs>Turn off Windows features, uncheck Remote Differential Compression.

[dmex]

There might be a simple resolution to slow file transfers...goto control panel and open "Programs and features" then click "turn windows features on or off" then scroll down and untick "Windows DFS replication service".

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

[chicagotech]

Thank you for the input.

[chicagotech]

Problems with the network, hard disk drive, or storage drivers cause a program to stop unexpectedly in Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=937097&SD=tech

[guest]

You have encountered a slow performance while attempting to copy files
from a Vista laptop to a HP business notebook. If I have misunderstood
about your concern, feel free to let me know.

Before moving on, I would like to confirm the following information:

Does performance improve when copying files via the command line as opposed
to Windows Explorer interface? File copies via the command line use the SMB
protocol and the redirector component while file copies through the GUI use
the redirector and the shell components.

If the file copy is also slow from the command line, please take the
following steps to do the troubleshooting:

Step 1: Check the Network Adapter
==================================================
1. Update the Network Adapter to the latest driver from the manufacturer.
NOTE: Although this is a simple step, this has fixed a large number of slow
file copy cases.
2. Go to Device Manager -> Right click on the Network Adapter -> Properties
-> Advanced, please temporarily disable TCP and IP checksum offloading.
This will cause this processing to be handled by Windows TCPIP stack
instead of the Network card.
3. Set the Network Card and Switch from Autodetect to a hard coded link
speed such as 100mb/half duplex.

Step 2: Add the CopyFileBufferedSynchronousIo registry entry
==============================================
1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press
ENTER.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type CopyFileBufferedSynchronousIo to name the new entry, and then
press ENTER.
5. Right-click CopyFileBufferedSynchronousIo, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1 , and then click OK.
7. Exit Registry Editor

Step 3: Adjust the MTU settings for VPN connection:
==============================================
a. On Vista notebook, please try to ping the File Server (laptop) site with
the following command:

ping 192.168.0.7 -f -l 1472 (replace 192.168.0.7 with the IP of the File
server laptop)

Will you receive the following response?

Reply from 192.168.0.7: bytes=1472 time=74ms TTL=58

b. If you receive a negative response, please try to ping with reduced
packet size of 10 (1462), will the ping work?
c. Repeat step b using a smaller MTU size. Repeat this process to check if
the ping command will succeed.