HI We have just taken delivery of a new PC running Windows 7 32 bit. The PC is joined to our internal domain. This particular PC seems to have a connectivity issue to our Exchange 2003 which is running on Windows Server 2003 R2. When I say connectivity issues I mean that for example I UNC to the exchange server from the PC it takes about 5-10 seconds for the default shares to appear. If I RDP from the PC to Exchange server the connection hangs and drops. If I unc from this PC to any of our other 2003 or 2008 servers the shares come up instantly and the likewise If I RDP from the PC to any of the other servers it works flawlessly. If I use any other PC on the network to unc or RDP to the Exchange 2003 box they all work perfectley, its just this one PC. I have wiped and rebuilt it again with the exact same problem appearing. We do have one other Windows 7 PC on our network and it connects to the Exchange 2003 with no issues at all. I'm tearing my hair out with this one, can anyone help? Thanks

What is the Anti Virus application that is running.If you have any remove it ( don't disable) and see if that helps

No anti-virus installed on the PC, totally clean install

First steps should always be to make sure you have the latest NIC driver installed. Try plugging this PC into a different switch port, or if its a managed switch, log on to see if there are any errors on the port. In the worst case troubleshooting scenario, you can load packet capturing software on two computers (one working as expected, and the other on this Win 7 PC), then capture network traffic on both when you attempt to make the connection...compare the results. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Have installed latest drivers and tried different ports on the switch. Not really experienced in packet capture and was hoping I didnt have to go down this route. My worst case scenario is that I can downgrade the PC to XP but obviously would rather get it working.

So you have verified that this issue does not occur on this specfiic PC with XP? Does this machine have different NIC hardware than others running Win 7? You indicated that you reloaded Win 7 at least twice with no improvement so, its probably not OS config related. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

No I havent yet loaded XP on this PC to try, thats the last resort as I say. I have loaded Windows 7 twice with same results so if no other suggestions I will need to load XP on this particular PC to see if same issues persists.

I wouldnt expect that you would see a differnce with XP, and if you do, It would appear to be driver related. However, the only way to really see the difference in network traffic is going to be with a capture. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

We have now installed XP and it is working fine which is a shame as obviously we wanted to use Windows 7 but just could not resolve this. We did try different network cards under Windows 7 but the issue was always there no matter which NIC/driver we used which leads me to believe it wasnt a driver issue, well not a NIC driver anyway. Very strange!

This is very strange. However, since you have proven that its working fine via XP, we know that the networking components are good. The network card you are using in Win 7 is on the HCL? You did not post whether or not this Win 7/NIC was the same as the other Win 7 systems that were fine. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Fair point about checking the HCL however this is an HP Workstation that came with Windows 7 pre-loaded and the NIC is onboard. I have got to assume that the intel driver is on the HCL. It is a different Intel NIC that is in this PC to the other Intel NIC on the other PC that is working with Windows 7 but obviously this NIC is working ok with XP ok. Remember though that issue only occurred (under Windows 7) with one specific server which, whether significant or not, is running 2003 R2. The connections to all our other servers were fine.

ok, I can provide an update that hopefully narrows down the issue We installed service pack 1 onto the Windows 7 PC on the network that was not having the problem and guess what, the exact same problem with the 2003 r2 server happened. We un-installed SP1 and worked fine again. Obviously something in SP1 for Windows 7 Does that help anyone shed some light on this?

That's good troubleshooting. Can you check the vendor's website to see if their driver has an issue with SP1? you may be the first to report it...or maybe there is a newer driver because this has already been discovered. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

The only thing that still causes an issue with this is that it is only happening with Server 2003 R2 This would mean if it was a driver issue it was only with that specific OS