I have a mid-range server (3.2G P4 with HyperThreading, 2G Ram, Mirrored 10K SATA HD, 2 NICS, etc.) that is really fast locally, but networking is suprisingly slow. This server is the DC for a new domain. All pc's have joined the domain successfully. There are no errors in the server logs. Nslookup reports both addresses and the full DNS name of the server. Most workstations are XP with SP2. The old DC has been demoted and is not even joined to the domain at this point. When I was migrating the data from one server to the other, the xcopy or copy-paste operation would start out ok (not fast, but ok). Then, after about 10 seconds both net activity lights on both servers would go blank. After a 10 second pause or so, the copy process would resume or I would get an error message that the connection had been lost. During one of the copy processes, I monitored the Task Manager network activity report, and it rarely got above 5%. The server remains slow with all the workstations joined while performing routine network activity. The P3 W2k Proliant was faster across the network than this. Please help! Thanks. Thanks, MAC

This is a known issue with Win2k3 and XP its because of SMB signing. i.e each block of data sent over network is checked for security etc etc, there is a policy hack that you can try at teh following link. http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=98

Thanks for the reply. I actually tried this, but it didn't help. I already solved the problem, though. It turned out that the primary NIC was dropping packets for some reason. Other than that, it worked fine. I found this out by disabling the primary NIC and reconfiguring the secondary as the primary. I think I still need to reapply this GP, though. I'll check next time I get a chance. Thanks, MAC