WinXP, Word 97 - ALternative Solution to Slow File Opening - Win2kS and Win2k3S

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From: JC (jcconsultingukltd_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:16:16 -0000

I'm sharing this for comment and to possibly save others some pain.

Recently completed a network upgrade from NT4 Server/Workstation to Win2k
Server / Win XP Pro SP 1 workstations. The workstations were running Office
97 (constraint). File opening times for MS Word across the network were v
slow and v variable (30 secs to 3 mins for single-sided letters on a network
of 4 terminals with only me logged on.

Connecting my laptop with Office 2003 on XP Pro SP2 got no performance
improvement.
Performance for opening the files on the local hard disk after copying them
from the server was also slow (same)
Simple file transfer performance across the network, server>>client, was
fine.

Did research on web and tried the Group Policy thing to no avail.
Ran network monitor on server whilst opening document on workstation and saw
demands for name resolution for a server that did not exist on the network
Dragged Word doc into notepad and see that towards the end of the file there
is a history trail pointing at old versions of the document resident on
servers that no longer exist...
Following a discussion with a colleague, set up fixed mappings in Wins
database to resolve names of old servers to address of new server.
Documents now open in 1-2 seconds

Have paid attention on my own network (Win2k3S) and observed the same issue
(and tested the fix with an LMHOSTS entry on the workstation - NB if you use
LMHOSTS, then the first opening will be slow while the workstation reads it)
and achieved the same fix.

Issue appears to lie with some form of revision history (?) saving history
in the documents created as people use one document as a template for
another (open document, edit it and File, Save As... something different)
rather than creating a new document from a template.

Following points may help if you migrate a corpus of Word docs and templates
by simply picking them up and dropping them on a new server
- Performance impact varies from doc to doc depending on the length of the
"revision" chain
- Supply name resolution for old servers
- Consider migrating templates by rebuilding them so that there is no
reference to a missing server

Hopefully, somebody else will find this useful. It could be that I just
missed the other post(s) that mentioned this solution in which case, please
forgive the posting.

I do have one question... Does anybody know of a cunning widget for cleaning
up that part of the document?

Regards
JC

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