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Slow Browsing When Navigating Network Drives

A user called the Help Desk citing slow access whenever he would open My Computer or drill into folders. Usually, these types of problems can be a real problem to troubleshoot, because you don’t really know if it’s a network issue or a Windows issue. The machine in question was a Windows XP SP2 workstation. Time to get out the handy dandy Regmon utility!

Upon starting the log, the last entry is read before the lock up is HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\##CDTower14-1#MAPICS. Mountpoints refer to drives we have mapped, so lets look at what we have mapped:

Mapics on ‘Procom CDTower-E2, V4.28 (CDtower 14-1)’ (Z:). Upon clicking this drive, I was told that Windows couldn’t find this path. Ah ha! After deleting the drive mapping, the speed of folder navigation returned to normal.

– Soli Deo Gloria