Opera II 6.8x + performance on Windows 7 compared to XP

Yes, we have a number of customers complaining about Opera II speed. Specifically on Vista or Win 7. Same network with an XP workstation is OK,

Yes , we are having customers complaining about the same thing, speed issues on windows 7 and locking, hanging issues.

Is Opera II on Windows Server 2008 and if so is SMB2 off ?

Is Opera II on Windows Server 2008 and if so is SMB2 off ?

My instructions state to turn off on workstation but not on Server as other services may need 2.0 running on Server - Is that adfvice correct?

0712131256598360.doc

I have read conflicting instructions as to where to turn it off - note that the issues with speed and corruption affect a variety of applications and technologies, not just those based on FoxPro.

Anyway depending on what you read you need to turn SMB2 off

(a) on individual Vista/Win 7 workstations

or

(b) on ALL Vista/Win 7 workstations regardless of whether the app is on them.

or

(c) on the server and workstations

or

(d) on both server and workstations.

Unless you have a huge amount of network traffic I would be surprised if turning it off on the server would affect anything else. In fact Microsoft themselves recommended turning it off on the server at one stage last year because of a security flaw. So I would try turning it off server-side, you can always turn it back on.

Sorry, (c) there should have read 'on the server only'

We've not seen performance issues with Windows 7 in our test beds here, but I'll investigate the problem if you could send me more details. Either send me a message or log an incident.
What I'd need is more information about the systems with the problem. Could you run the Pegasus Information Utility on the machine(s) reporting the problem and send me the .txt file?
Also, is it just batch processing that's slow? Is it slow all the time or does it seem to be intermittent?
Could you try pinging the server to help us ascertain whether the problem lies with the network?

alex

Morning,

We have a customer using a 2003 server and XP machines without any issues. They recently purchased a Windows 7 PC and Opera II (version 6.82.10) now runs very slowly on this machine and hangs and gets 'not responding' messages.

We have tried turning off SMB2 on the workstation but this has made no difference.

I am unsure what else to try, does anyone have any suggestions?

What's the Pegasus Information Utility and where can I find it?

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex,
The Pegasus Information Utility provides a wide range of info about your set up.
If you're running the enterprise version 6.80 or above, there should be a file called pegInfo.exe in the "Client VFP" folder - Double click on that.
You can also get to it by clicking on Start ->All programs ->Pegasus Opera II and from there there should be an option called PegInfo Utility (underneath the help and readme options)

Let me know how you get on

I would turn off SMB2 on the server. It's very unlikely to affect anything IMO, and you can always turn it back on.

Also Windows 7 seems more prone to being affected by out-of-date network card drivers, dodgy cabling, misconfigured routers and so on. Make sure your network card drivers are up-to-date and 64-bit if it's Windows 7 64-bit.

Just heard from my customer that turning off SMB2 on server and workstation has improved speed and stopped opera and operations crashing.

Thanks for all your advice.

John

porsche-pascoe

John,
We've found turning smb off seriously lenghtens the period update so we turn it on via the server registry (then reboot) while the monthend is run exclusively then turn it off before the users go back on. Helps that opera's on a dedicated server rather than the dc.

Kiran

alex

Morning,

Our customer is still having issues. We have turned off SMB2 on the Windows 7 PC. It is a 2003 server so doesn't have SMB2 (am i right in thinking this?). We ran the PegInfo utility but it didn't really give us anything new. They are using 6.82.01 which is compatible with Win7 64 bit i believe. I'm out of ideas now! Does anyone have any other suggestions?
I'm reluctant to go to their hardware company and just dump the problem with them as I hate it when this is done to us!

Thanks,
Alex

Alex

SMB2 came in with Vista, so any combination of Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008 connected together will use it by default. So with Windows 7 and a Windows Server 2003 it will drop back to SMB1 anyway.

I have seen a few people get results by turning off Remote Differential Compression on the WIndows 7 machine, it is one of the suggestions on this list:
www.sysprobs.com/windows-7-network-slow

Give them a shot.

If you're really desparate then you could lend the customer a server to see if the problems go away when you do that. It's a PITA but it does effectively half the problem for you.

steve-coe

We have a similar problem, New DELL 2008 Std Server with New Windows 7 Workstations. Still kept some old XP workstations on network.

Run a Report Manager Report in Windows 7 it takes around 4 Minutes to get the the Criteria Page, run it on the old XP Workstation and it takes 2m 15s, where is the logic in that?

Run the same report direct on Server it takes 4 seconds to bring up the Criteria page.

We have swapped Switch makes not difference.
New Patch lead etc......

We have turn SMB on and off at both Server and Workstation level.
Replaced Network in Workstation but does not make much difference.
Replaced Workstation

Running out of Ideas

But there must be something seriously wrong with how Opera is coping with data on Windows 2008/Windows 7

ideas would we welcome

We have several customers now all complaianing of speed issues when running on windows 7, XP machines are much faster. Is there a document detailing out options you suggest as is appears that these suggestions are not making any difference.

dhynds

Disabling SMB2 may be a red herring as far as speed is concerned however we had a customer who was continuously crashing and breaking the index on STRAN until we disabled SMB2 and the problem has now disappeared.

Have you tried looking to see if there is a tick in the QoS Packet Scheduler for network traffic? (Local Area Network Properties)
Passed from a colleague and I am not Windows expert but worth testing.

You definitely need to address SMB2 to stop index corruption, although I believe there is a hotfix available from Microsoft that addresses the problem (and it's not just with VFP/Opera) as well.

With regards to speed, I know my own Win 7 PC at home had network issues until I removed IPV6 from the network stack (leaving the traditional IPV4), maybe worth a punt on one of the Win 7 clients.

I am not a windows expert either so to be able to pass on things to try to either my end user or my own engineers I need a checklist to go through as SMB2 means nothing to me, thanks

steve-coe

Yes we have found that disabling SMB on the Server stops data corruptions and all sorts of strange errors.

We have done the IPV6 which didnt have any effect but not the QoS

We basically done everything off that link that Alan put here

Any further ideas ?