Strange network behaviour on XP

Question

I have a workstation which suddenly hangs the applications working over shared resources. But not for other TCP connections.

For instance, I open windows explorer and browse on Z:\documents. Also I open a terminal server connection. The first one hangs and the second one works perfectly.

This only happens on that workstation but not on any other on the company. I'm discarded the antivirus because I've disabled it.

Any suggestion?

UPDATE1: @Jay, It hangs after browse or while using another software using shared folders.

UPDATE2: @Russ, There is no firewall more than the windows firewall and it's exactly the same that the other workstations.

Answer 1

Here are the things I would check first:

• Recently retired servers.
• Recently retired printers.
• Old servers in offline files sychronization.

Windows may be trying to connect to the old shares and printers.

If it is offline files that is causing the issue you can clear the synchronization with csccmd

csccmd /delete:\\servername\path /recurse2

Answer 2

Are you using any software firewall between the two devices? I've found that firewalls like ZoneAlarm cause havoc with Windows filesharing. Try disabling or adding both systems to a trusted list and report back.

Edit: Is the "Workstation" service running? Are there any errors in the Event Logs?

Answer 3

Use process monitor from sysinternals and filter out unneded events and look to see what is going on right at the time it hangs. I recently found one program that seemed to be hanging was actually trying to upload a rather large backup to the network and was waiting on that to complete before it would work. You may also see things like denied accesses that could point you to maybe a permissions error or a firewall block.