Apparently a Novell server at a branch location is experiencing a gradual slowdown. I replaced somebody who used to sign in to do maintenance on the server, but I have no idea where to start. If what the users say is true, then nobody's been logging in to maintain the server for almost a year now, which would certainly cause some hangups. However, I do not know what to delete from the server except for their data files. I don't know the exact number of files, but they are definitely stored in single directories, and that the number has likely exceeded 10000 files. The branch office consists of a Novell Netware 4.11 server and three clients, two of which are running Windows 98 (uncertain about the third). I hope that this is enough information.

James, For starters a Novell NetWare server needs rebooted about every 90 days otherwise it will cause some strange things to start to happen. The only other thing is to do a PURGE to clean up disk space. Not sure what your experience with Novell is, but when you delete a file from a NetWare server its still there taking up space until a PURGE is issued. Sorta like Windows Recycle Bin. There is no defrag (from windows world). The server maintains this online so to speak. Again, best bet is to PURGE and then reboot the server. HTH

First, I will strongly disagree with spaceman...Novell Netware servers do not need to be rebooted regularly like WinDoze machines to avoid weird behavior. I have several with over a year of uptime, and so do many other people. I only take them down to do hardware maint. The purge he mentioned is due to the fact that Netware has always had a means of recovering deleted files. If you right-click on a netware volume or directory from win9x/NT two of the choices are "SalvageFiles" and "PurgeFiles". Salvage is the undelete, but a purge should be performed fairly regularly in an active directory as the deleted files continue to take up space and directory entries. A directory can be marked "PurgeImmediate" if undeleted is not a concern. The problem that you are seeing is likely related to the large number of files in the directory. I just had a similar issue with a directory with about 7,000 temp files left in it, causing poor performance. Deleting these un-needed files restored the server performance immediately. For more info, refer to the following TID: http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10021744.htm So, delete un-needed files, or change the directory structure such that directories contain less than (in my opinion) 5,000 entries. Then perform a purge to recover disk space. Normally, there would be no need to reboot server after this. If the problem continues, look at NIC's failing, Hubs, etc that could cause packet floods. Hope this helps

Super! Thanks nobody. :) I can take a look at the purge, but the number of files in the directory is something I am going to have to look at in greater detail. I have no control over the program that creates these files, and it just puts all the files into one directory. However, perhaps those tweaks will make a difference if they haven't already been set.