Office saving to temp files over network!

osaddictosaddict London, UK
edited September 2006 in Science & Tech
Hey guys,

I have a problem which has stumped me- probably an easy one for someone- but quite a bit of google searching hasn't revealed any clues yet.

Basically we have a number of users who save documents to a central network drive- up until recently this has been fine, however, now people are having problems..

When saving a simple excel file for example-
'your changes to 'file.xls' could not be saved, but were saved to a temporary file named xxxx' etc

Clicking save 3-4 times will then eventually make it save on the network drive... obviously this is very annoying for all the users!

1. This doesn't happen ALL the time- the file can usually be saved eventually
2. It still happens when there is only 1-3 people on the network, and when the file is only being accessed by one person
3. The drive its saving to has plenty of space- 4gb's + (enough for .xls and .doc files)
4. As it does not happen all the time I concluded that write protection, permissions etc were not the issue.
5. Saving the same file to the desktop works fine- proving its not connected to the particular file!

Any clues guys?!

Thanks!

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Does it happen to all users? It might actually be a network problem such as a flaky patch cord from the server to the switch or something.

    Check the server event logs, and especially look for entries such as "the server has elected to be a master browser, but the server such-and-such already believes it is the master browser" or something to that effect.

    What are the server specs? OS, etc?
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    As far as I know it happens to most users- it has not happened to me and one other colleague- yet others- at least 5-6 it has happend to.

    The server is from the stone age- it runs on Nt4! It's a dual processor machine, x86 Family 6 Model 7 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~498 Mhz, 512mb ram, 2 18gb HDD's mirrored etc, far from decent :p (We are getting an upgrade mid-late November)

    Just looked in the system, security and application logs and can find nothing even close to that- infact nothing which gives any clues what so ever!
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    I have a feeling it is network related. Do a simple test: open a command prompt on one of the workstations that was having the problem, and type:

    ping -t servername (or the server IP)

    Let it run for five minutes. If you have any packet loss whatsoever, that is your problem. If not, we'll look at some other things.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    Running this now,

    You say let it run- presumably it will not actually stop like a standard ping? - If so how do I stop it and get the results! (Please excuse my extreme novice type question!)
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    Ah, Ctrl C seems to stop it alright,

    On my pc (which has never had this problem!) its 0% loss, on a colleagues pc who has had the problem very often- also 0% loss, just for completeness I tried on another pc which had the problem right in front of me before opening cmd prompt, also 0% loss...

    The plot thickens!
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Is this an NT 4 domain, or just a workgroup? Do they access the server with a mapped drive letter, or by \\server\whatever\whatever?
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    This is a very simple setup- all pc's connect to the server just as a file store basically- no domain server or anything.

    The drives they will be saving to are mapped- i.e u: maps to \\Server_name\Path1 etc
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    what about event logs on the client workstations that are having the problems?
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    ok- I have had a look on one problem workstation:

    DCOM got error "Class not registered " from the computer PEI_SERVER when attempting to activate the server:
    {5A5AA0AA-1DEB-4683-96B0-B43301E83971}

    (PEI_Server) is the name of the server I was pinging before- our server
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Well, that's an unrelated problem which can be cured by following that link, but that doesn't help your real problem :hrm:

    What I would suggest is to create a new share, move the files to that, and re-map all the drives. See if that fixes the problem and then we'll go from there.
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited September 2006
    Might want to check this KB article too. It talks about the exact error in Excel. Blames it on the network user not having modify/delete rights.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813973/en-us
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    @mtrox- I saw that KB article before, the problem is that my problem is intermittant- i.e. 3-4 time of clicking save it will probably work!

    @primesuspect- how do i see those expertsexchange answers- I always thought they were a pay site so to speak!?

    @primesuspect- I tried creating a new share and saving a file to that- still the same error.

    I still think the fact that a colleague and I have never had the problem what so ever- even though in some instances we are using the same files as the other people (at different times obviously) should be a clue of some description!
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    Scroll down to see the whole answer @ experts-exchange

    I can't really pinpoint what's going on here. What's happening is most likely the workstations are losing their connection to the file while it is open. There could be a million different ways for that to happen. Even though you did a ping test, you might want to run one for several hours - like overnight. Do the ping test overnight and when you are done, hit ctrl-c to see if there were any dropped packets. Other than that, I'm stumped - I would have to sit in front of the machine to be able to fix it. :(
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2006
    hmm, dunno how i didnt spot experts exchange answers there lol sure i had some 'sign up for the answer' stuff from there before, oh well!

    The loosing their connection whilst files are open is an interesting idea- whilst they are having problems saving they can still successfully browse the web- indicating the connection is ok- strange.

    I will try to get one of them to set up a ping like that on their machine and see if it is still 0% loss...

    I too am stumped! (Mind you, I was before this thread haha)
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