windows 7 network issue

[jcomputing]

I have 10 windows xp professional computers and 1 windows 2008 sbs and 1 windows 7 professional computer. On the windows 7 computer 15- 20 min with no network activity to this computer the windows xp computers can't reach any shares on the windows 7 computer. Once the windows 7 computer is rebooted the windows xp computers can see the shares again.

[JorgeM]

has this only occurred just this once or does it happen routinely? When this occurred, was the Windows 7 machine able to access other hosts in the subnet, how about remote subnet such as the internet?

Next time this happens on the windows 7 follow these basic steps to test for connectivity:

1) open command prompt
2) ping an IP address in the same subnet
3) ping the default gateway's address
4) ping an IP on a remote subnet

If you do not the IP address/subnet of the computer, type ipconfig /all at the command prompt.

[jcomputing]

I have done this test before and everything seems to be ok. This has happened when I added a windows 7 computer to the network for basic file sharing. do you have any other suggestions.

[JorgeM]

When this issue occurs, you can PING the target computer, that means that network connectivity is OK. Is your local firewall running? Do you have another malware client that includes local firewall services? What is the exact error message you see on the screen, can you provide that next time it happens? Also, check the computer's event logs, specifically system log to see if anything is written to the log that can provide a clue as to what is occurring at that time.

[jcomputing]

can't remeber the exact message to be fair but the link below will describe the problem am having. I have tried what it advised with no success.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684

[JorgeM]

I am familiar with this article, but it assumes a problem on the client trying to access the share (Windows 7 share in this case). If this applied to you, then some of the windows XP systems would be "disconnected" while other were still "connected". When this issues happens, if none of the computers can access the Win 7 share, then the problem is most likely on the Win 7 box. the registry edits on the network clients (XP systems in your case) probably wouldnt help any as you experienced.

This Win 7 box is hard wired into the network or wireless? Just to rule out a possible driver issue, make sure that you install the latest version of the network driver for the NIC. If its hard wired, are you able to log into the switch and see if there are any logs or statistics about the port that this computer is connected to?

For some of the weird and hard to troubleshoot issues, sometimes, just uninstalling the device (device manager) and letting the computer rescan and re-install the device fixes quarky issues.

You may need to try several things before this issue clears...

[jcomputing]

I reinstalled windows and drivers numerous times. Unfortunatly the switch does not have capabilities to let me log in. I have not reinstalled up todate NIC drivers however I have tried numerous NIC cards and still the problem persists. I can vpn into the windows 7 pc from home just can't access shares. I stopped the windows firewall and refrained from installing anti-virus or malware products on the computer. I did however make sure all the winodws updates where installed on the box. On one installation I did not install any upadtes on the machine just incase it was an update that was causing the problem. Once the windows 7 pc is rebooted it works fine untill there is no network traffic going to that specific box after 15- 20min.

[JorgeM]

I reinstalled windows and drivers numerous times

Ok, so if you have reinstalled Windows on that box, it safe to assume that there isnt anything buggy with your current configuration since you have been able to reproduce it with two different OS instances on the same box. If you have another NIC handy, I would try swapping out the NIC just to rule out hardware.

other than that, its important to collect information at the time that this happens. This is not normal behavior for Windows 7 or the clients so this event is happening becuase of some reason. In some cases similiar to this one, it may even help to run a packet capture on the Windows 7 box to see exactly what was happening on the network the moment before this NIC stops communicating.

If you can locate an error message (on the screen, event log, etc...), it would make searching for the answer to this issue a little easier.

[jcomputing]

I have used numerous NIC cards with the same problem.