Lock up on network folders access

Roman Tumaykin

Hi all,

My Vista has regular lockups with the following symptoms:

Once in a while (usually one or 2 times a day) all of the applications that
access any network folders freese completely. I am able to ping the server
where the shares are, but when I try to open the share whatever app I use
(explorer, cmd.exe) just hangs.

I have Documents redirected to a server share at the colocation. I have a
VPN connection to the colocation which I use to do my work and also to sync
the files. I am using the Offline Folders feature to work with the files and
resync them every night. Since the VPN connection is slow, I force the
Offline Folders to be offline all the time.

What is interesting, while these folders are supposed to stay offline
(meaning the copies are on the local computer), when my system freeses I
can't access even them. I think that trying to access any path that starts
with \\ makes the application hang regardless whether it is a real share or
an offline folder.

I have searched all of the event logs and could not find any entry that may
shed any light on the situation. What's worse, since the system does not
respond, I have to hard shutdown and reboot my laptop to continue working.

This has been happening annoyingly frequently in the past year. I am
currently using Vista Ultimate x64, but the same was happening with Vista
Business x32 and even when I tried to use Windows Server 2008 as a
workstation.

Since I've experienced this with many configurations and systems, I suspect
that this has something to do with the fact that my Documents folder is
redirected and used offline.

Any help will be highly appreciated... I am almost ready to pull the trigger
and go back to Windows XP....

Thank you very much

Roman Tumaykin