Opening office on a network drive crashes network.

Hi all,

Replaced an old working ok network with all new equipment.
Including a Server 2003 R2 DC. Unmanaged Switch. Linux gateway and 12 PC's.
The only thing that still exists from old equipment is the cabling.

Problem:
When opening an Office 2007 document from a PC or notebook (from either in
domain or standalone) from a network drive, it intermittently crashes
PC's/server.

Symptoms:
If we're lucky it causes the PC to stop responding for 5 minutes before
closing the Office application. When possible a restart will then render the
PC usable again.

Otherwise it will lock up the PC and every other PC connected on the network
including the server. Sometimes waiting for a long enough period they can be
normally restarted, otherwise hard rebooted.

If I try to access any shares from the server, it says no Entries listed.
Sometimes this is restricted to just the PC the office document was opened
on, sometimes it says this for every PC in network.

Access documents always have a highest crash rate.
If the office document is copied to the local PC, it will open fine.

Server Services:
DC
Filesharing
DNS
DHCP
Group Policy
NOD32 Enterprise V3.0 server
Print sharing

Troubleshooting steps so far:
- Swapped the switch out.
- Examined event logs, any errors or warnings logged are only caused from
after the crash, not before or the actual crash time.
- Changing the speed of the network(1GBps network) from Autosense to
100MBps Full Duplex.
- Bringing an outside notebook with a different copy of Office 2007 on it,
still crashes.
- Replaced any suspicious network cabling.
- Replaced the NIC in the server with a 100mbps NIC.
- Disabled I/O acceration on NIC.
- Disabled JUMBO frames on NIC.
- Use the steps in KB 927695 to disable Receive Side Scaling (RSS). Also
have disabled something else mentioned in a simlilar article.
- Also disabled DHCPmediasense in arcticle KB 239924.
- Disabled all non-default GPO's.
- Copied the shared data drives to a local PC, setup logon script to access
the local PC, this has minimised the crashes, but I have been told it has
still crashed once or twice.
- Uninstalled Office 2007 and installed Office 2003 on a machine, this also
minimized crashes, but yet again I have been told it has crashed once or
twice.
- Examined data that is used/opened when the crashes occur, it can be any
one document or database out of hundreds if not thousands. If this same data
is taken to another similar network, the problem cannot be replicated.
- Had other technician's examine the problem over a period of time in case
I have missed something.


My next step:
- Unplug every PC/device on the network, plug in my personal notebook again
and re-test.
- Perform further testing on the PC with Office 2003.
- Perform further testing with opening documents on the PC mapped network
drive instead of the server one. BTW it crashes when opening documents from
a UNC path too, not just a mapped drive.

I will update further upon investigation to my next steps when possible.

However if anyone can shed any light or throw in any idea's, it would be
much appreciated?

Cheers

Kris

Hi Kris,

Have you tried to temporary disable your virusscanner (NOD32)? I've had this
kind of problems with virusscanners hanging the system
You could also try disabling 'offline files' on the shares, I've had similar
problems with offline files enabled, never found why..

Regards,

Jasper

"Kris" wrote:

Hi all,

Replaced an old working ok network with all new equipment.
Including a Server 2003 R2 DC. Unmanaged Switch. Linux gateway and 12 PC's.
The only thing that still exists from old equipment is the cabling.

Problem:
When opening an Office 2007 document from a PC or notebook (from either in
domain or standalone) from a network drive, it intermittently crashes
PC's/server.

Symptoms:
If we're lucky it causes the PC to stop responding for 5 minutes before
closing the Office application. When possible a restart will then render the
PC usable again.

Otherwise it will lock up the PC and every other PC connected on the network
including the server. Sometimes waiting for a long enough period they can be
normally restarted, otherwise hard rebooted.

If I try to access any shares from the server, it says no Entries listed.
Sometimes this is restricted to just the PC the office document was opened
on, sometimes it says this for every PC in network.

Access documents always have a highest crash rate.
If the office document is copied to the local PC, it will open fine.

Server Services:
DC
Filesharing
DNS
DHCP
Group Policy
NOD32 Enterprise V3.0 server
Print sharing

Troubleshooting steps so far:
- Swapped the switch out.
- Examined event logs, any errors or warnings logged are only caused from
after the crash, not before or the actual crash time.
- Changing the speed of the network(1GBps network) from Autosense to
100MBps Full Duplex.
- Bringing an outside notebook with a different copy of Office 2007 on it,
still crashes.
- Replaced any suspicious network cabling.
- Replaced the NIC in the server with a 100mbps NIC.
- Disabled I/O acceration on NIC.
- Disabled JUMBO frames on NIC.
- Use the steps in KB 927695 to disable Receive Side Scaling (RSS). Also
have disabled something else mentioned in a simlilar article.
- Also disabled DHCPmediasense in arcticle KB 239924.
- Disabled all non-default GPO's.
- Copied the shared data drives to a local PC, setup logon script to access
the local PC, this has minimised the crashes, but I have been told it has
still crashed once or twice.
- Uninstalled Office 2007 and installed Office 2003 on a machine, this also
minimized crashes, but yet again I have been told it has crashed once or
twice.
- Examined data that is used/opened when the crashes occur, it can be any
one document or database out of hundreds if not thousands. If this same data
is taken to another similar network, the problem cannot be replicated.
- Had other technician's examine the problem over a period of time in case
I have missed something.


My next step:
- Unplug every PC/device on the network, plug in my personal notebook again
and re-test.
- Perform further testing on the PC with Office 2003.
- Perform further testing with opening documents on the PC mapped network
drive instead of the server one. BTW it crashes when opening documents from
a UNC path too, not just a mapped drive.

I will update further upon investigation to my next steps when possible.

However if anyone can shed any light or throw in any idea's, it would be
much appreciated?

Cheers

Kris

Hi Jasper,

I disabled the antivirus software on the server for a week, and it was a
week of no crashes. Downloaded and installed fresh antivirus software again
on server yesterday, so far so good!!!

Thanks for your suggestion.


"Jasper Zondervan" wrote:

Hi Kris,

Have you tried to temporary disable your virusscanner (NOD32)? I've had this
kind of problems with virusscanners hanging the system
You could also try disabling 'offline files' on the shares, I've had similar
problems with offline files enabled, never found why..

Regards,

Jasper

"Kris" wrote:

Hi all,

Replaced an old working ok network with all new equipment.
Including a Server 2003 R2 DC. Unmanaged Switch. Linux gateway and 12 PC's.
The only thing that still exists from old equipment is the cabling.

Problem:
When opening an Office 2007 document from a PC or notebook (from either in
domain or standalone) from a network drive, it intermittently crashes
PC's/server.

Symptoms:
If we're lucky it causes the PC to stop responding for 5 minutes before
closing the Office application. When possible a restart will then render the
PC usable again.

Otherwise it will lock up the PC and every other PC connected on the network
including the server. Sometimes waiting for a long enough period they can be
normally restarted, otherwise hard rebooted.

If I try to access any shares from the server, it says no Entries listed.
Sometimes this is restricted to just the PC the office document was opened
on, sometimes it says this for every PC in network.

Access documents always have a highest crash rate.
If the office document is copied to the local PC, it will open fine.

Server Services:
DC
Filesharing
DNS
DHCP
Group Policy
NOD32 Enterprise V3.0 server
Print sharing

Troubleshooting steps so far:
- Swapped the switch out.
- Examined event logs, any errors or warnings logged are only caused from
after the crash, not before or the actual crash time.
- Changing the speed of the network(1GBps network) from Autosense to
100MBps Full Duplex.
- Bringing an outside notebook with a different copy of Office 2007 on it,
still crashes.
- Replaced any suspicious network cabling.
- Replaced the NIC in the server with a 100mbps NIC.
- Disabled I/O acceration on NIC.
- Disabled JUMBO frames on NIC.
- Use the steps in KB 927695 to disable Receive Side Scaling (RSS). Also
have disabled something else mentioned in a simlilar article.
- Also disabled DHCPmediasense in arcticle KB 239924.
- Disabled all non-default GPO's.
- Copied the shared data drives to a local PC, setup logon script to access
the local PC, this has minimised the crashes, but I have been told it has
still crashed once or twice.
- Uninstalled Office 2007 and installed Office 2003 on a machine, this also
minimized crashes, but yet again I have been told it has crashed once or
twice.
- Examined data that is used/opened when the crashes occur, it can be any
one document or database out of hundreds if not thousands. If this same data
is taken to another similar network, the problem cannot be replicated.
- Had other technician's examine the problem over a period of time in case
I have missed something.


My next step:
- Unplug every PC/device on the network, plug in my personal notebook again
and re-test.
- Perform further testing on the PC with Office 2003.
- Perform further testing with opening documents on the PC mapped network
drive instead of the server one. BTW it crashes when opening documents from
a UNC path too, not just a mapped drive.

I will update further upon investigation to my next steps when possible.

However if anyone can shed any light or throw in any idea's, it would be
much appreciated?

Cheers

Kris