Home Premium: Cannot run a server?
Every hour or so my Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit fails to respond to anything from other local network computers - until W7 itself initiates a connection or an interchange with the others. Its enough to ping the other computer from W7 to get the networking back to normal. In the mean time, W7 has full internet connectivity. The symptom is that Outlook Express on my Windows XP computer using IMAP to reach a hMailServer running on the W7 computer fails to reach the server and complains loudly. Then I go upstairs, open a console window and type "ping XP_HOSTNAME". Then I go back downstairs, stop the ongoing "send and Receive" operation and start it again. I instantly get the new mails. I have tried to run Wireshark on both computers. I invariably find that Wireshark on W7 has stopped with an error message if the connectivity has disappeared. If I just restart Wireshark capture, connectivity resumes. When connectivity is down, arp requests from the XP client do not appear on the wireshark screen on W7. I have tried to set a static ARP entry for the W7 in the XP, but still W7 fails to respond to ping (ICMP Echo Request). I have looked at the ARP table on W7, sometimes i has an entry for the XP, but the connectivity is still down. Is all this somehow normal? Has the Home Premium Edition been curtailed to be unusable as a server? If not, how can I debug this further? Thanks
February 14th, 2011 12:05pm

Check your power settings. Make sure the Windows 7 machine isn't set to power down the network adapter and hard drive after a certain period of time. Also make sure it isn't set to go to sleep or hibernate. In other words, because you're using it as a server, you want to keep everything powered up - always; although it's probably okay for the monitor to power off.
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February 14th, 2011 12:40pm

Thanks, the W7 is not switching off the network card, since it has full internet connectivity using the same interface. It also has numerous exchanges of neighborhood discovery protocols all the time. The monitor does go dark, and comes back on when I touch the mouse or hit a key.
February 14th, 2011 8:27pm

Hi, Please refer to the following link. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430 Also, check the Power Setting.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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February 16th, 2011 10:06pm

I found out where to look at power settings, and now this problem is solved. I am using an USB wireless adapter, so I configured the USB system too, and set it to "maximum performace" whatever that actually implies. I do not understand how this works since I saw that I could access the internet from the W7 computer, so I thought it could not be the power. I also ran a "ping XP" command from autoexec.bat on the W7. I used the cygwin version since it runs perpetually. Still the network failed every two or three hours. The task manager on the W7 showed that the ping process was still running, but the wireshark capture on the XP did not show any ICMP traffic. If I "kicked" the W7, e.g. by restarting wireshark or by running another PING from a command window, the network was restored, and the wireshark capture on the XP showed that the ICMP traffic had resumed. How come the W7 OS does not know that the network interface is in use? Hm, I guess it considers the interface in use if a process opens a socket but not if a socket is continuously in use. An additional observation: Outlook Explorer on the XP client computer does not discover that the networking has resumed operation. That is, in the OE client I click "Send and Receive" and I get a dialog with a list of tasks. (I am describing the situation before I changed the power settings in the W7.) When the problem was present, I would notice that OE was stuck in the first task, while the progress bar reached the second third. I would know I had to go upstairs and "kick" the W7. Then going back down, OE would in the mean time have given up on the first two tasks and keep trying the third, still without success. I then used to click "Stop", and click "Send and Receive" again. This time OE successfully finished all the tasks. I guess I made some incorrect inferences the first times I observed this, and this made me think the server problem persisted while I was having internet connectivity from the W7. Thanks
February 21st, 2011 1:23pm

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