Strange Microsoft Office Related Behavior

[Joe4]

My home hard-drive recently crashed, so I got a new hard-drive and re-installed all my programs on it. I have Windows XP Home Edition (with the Professional Upgrade to get Access and VBA Capabilities).

Anyway, after re-loading everything, we searched for and ran all updates, ran a de-frag, and even ran a "Detect and Repair" from inside Excel.

However, I am having an odd problem. When I first browse to open/save a file in Excel, Access, Word, or Windows Explorer, the system is very slow to respond. It defaults to My Documents, when I click on My Computer it takes a few minutes to list my drives. If I click a second time, I get a "Not Responding" error message.

Has anyone had problems like these? Any idea on how to fix it?

Might the following items be involved?
1. Firewall
2. I have mapped a bunch of work drives that are not active until I login in with a VPN account (though these are not the drives I am trying to reference)

Thanks.

 

[Andrew Fergus]

I've seen similarly unresponsive computers but no longer use those PC's.

Does this help?
http://www.mcmaster.ca/ctl/slwebclient.htm

It sounds like it cannot find the VPN drives....can you remove them and see if the problem persists?

Andrew

 

[Joe4]

Thanks, Andrew.

Is that link you sent me telling me to disconnect the network drives altogether? I am not sure I want to do that. They are a pain in the neck to map (long names and there are about 12 of them), so I would prefer not to remove them. Maybe just temporarily disconnect them, if that is possible?

The odd thing I didn't have this problem with my old hard drive, and it was the same system and mappings as it is now.


EDIT: I talked to my IT guy, and I think I was not fully understanding what the link was saying. Our IT guy said that disabling the WebClient Service should not remove the mappings. I will play around with it when I get home tonight.

 

[Richard Schollar]

This handy little code snippet could be of use to you if you want the UNC path of your network drives:

Sub ListNetworkDrives()
Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set objDrives = objNetwork.EnumNetworkDrives
strDrives = "Network drive Mappings:" & Chr(13)
For I = 0 To objDrives.Count - 1 Step 2
strDrives = strDrives & "Drive " & objDrives.Item(I) & " = " & objDrives.Item(I + 1) & Chr(13)
Next
Debug.Print strDrives
End Sub

Prints to the Immediate window. I find it useful at work.

Best regards

Richard

 

[Joe4]

Andrew,
I got around to trying that method you referenced, and it did not fix the problem.

Has anyone else experienced this behavior?

 

[Richard Schollar]

Hi JM14

I can't believe this would be the culprit to your problem but I suppose it's worth a shot:

Go into My Computer and then into Folder Options; on the View Tab try unchecking the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" under Files and Folders in Advanced Settings.

Richard

 

[Joe4]

Richard,

Thanks for the response/idea. Sounds like a good possibility, I'll test it out when I get home tonight.

 

[Joe4]

Richard,
I was hopeful, but alas, that did not seem to fix the problem.
Thanks for the efforts, though. I will keep searching!

 

[Richard Schollar]

Hi Jm14

I don't know if you ever resolved your issue, but I have been coming across the problem now and then and certainly others have found printers can be the cause (I know the following sounds a lot like the suggestion I made previously, which was no help). This is from another Excel newsgroup:

1
From: Dave Peterson - view profile
Date: Wed, Aug 31 2005 3:09 pm
Email: Dave Peterson <peter...@verizonXSPAM.net>
Groups: microsoft.public.excel.misc
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Can you try a test.

Add a new printer and tell windows it's on LPT1 (local). (It doesn't have to
really exist.)

Then see how excel reacts when that's your default printer.

If it's still slow, then IT wins. If it's ok, then woohoo, time to ask some
questions!

Mcmaineacjam wrote:

> Ever since a new new network print server was put on-line, my Excel
> intermittently goes very very slow. You have to wait just deleting a line.
> The tech department states that Excel is on my computer, so this could not be
> the problem, but it never did it before, and is happening to others in the
> organization. Any ideas out there?

It seems this was the solution to a poster in the Technical Issues forum too:

http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?p=1128299#1128299

Hope you do get it sorted eventually - even if the above is no help.

Richard

 

[Joe4]

Richard,

I finally got around to checking this out. I added a new "bogus" printer and made it my default printer, but that did not help either.

The odd thing about it is the only difference is that I have a new hard drive. All my programs and hardware haven't changed.

I guess it is a big mystery...
I appreciate the effort, though.