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There are a couple of reasons you might do this, the first is an exploit.

The second is potential locking and corruption issues with legacy flat-file databases. There is a performance penalty in doing this - but how noticeable is it? What other reasons are there for not disabling SMB2 (assuming the security vulnerability is fixed) ?

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  • Just updating to say that the corruption issues mentioned above were solved with Server 2008 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1, therefore SMB2 should absolutely be left in the default enabled state on the server.
    – Alan B
    Sep 13, 2011 at 13:10
  • Just a note here (in case someone stumbles across this question in the future) to confirm that the issues with SMB2 were absolutely NOT resolved in Windows Server 2008 SP1 and Win7 SP1. Access databases work fine, FoxPro databases will suffer constant corruption with SMB2 enabled, and less frequently with SMB oplocks enabled.
    – EKW
    Mar 24, 2012 at 12:32
  • I dispute this - is there any supporting evidence? I deal with a multiuser VFP 9 application installed on hundreds of sites, quite a few of which will now be Windows Server 2008 SP1 / Windows 7 SP1 and we are not experiencing any corruption.
    – Alan B
    Mar 24, 2012 at 17:59
  • I deal with a FoxPro ODBC-based app on a few hundred sites. Sites which are pure-XP don't experience any issues, sites which are a mixed client environment (XP, Vista/7) or pure-Vista/7 experience issues until SMB2 directory caching is disabled (Server 2003/XP hosts), or SMB2 and oplocking are disabled (Server 2008/Vista/7 hosts).
    – EKW
    Mar 24, 2012 at 18:22
  • When you say ODBC-based, do you mean it's a non-VFP application accessing the VFP data via ODBC?
    – Alan B
    Mar 25, 2012 at 18:13

2 Answers 2

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"The second is potential locking and corruption issues with legacy flat-file databases." Please explain this issue a little bit more, e.g. what do you mean with flat-file databases? thx ice

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  • Well, MS Access and Visual FoxPro would be two example. In the case of the latter it is often necessary to turn off Opportunistic Locking on the server to alleviate multiuser file access and locking problems. This is done by setting EnableOplocks to 0 in the registry under HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\LANMANSERVER\PARAMETERS. However under Windows Server 2008 you can't turn that off without first turning SMB2 off.
    – Alan B
    Nov 23, 2009 at 10:15
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I would not disable SMB2. The only reason would be the flat-file databases which Microsoft doesn't recommend to use in the future.

If the application-client resides on a XP or W2K3 there is no SMB2 in action, even if the flat-file is stored on W2K8.

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