>thanks so much for providing info on this. i went through the entired thread you suggested.
>
>do you have any idea why disabling smb2 on windows 2008 server can sometimes causes loss of network connection (IOW, nothing works.).
>
>network admin tried disabling smb2 on both TS and file server (both are windows 2008) but becuase of that these 2 computers were not able to communicate with each other.
>
>i want to know if i suggest them to disable smb2 only on the file server then will they have any communication problems between workstation and server? all workstations are xp except TS (which is again windows 2008)
>
>i read in that thread you suggested that few other people also had similar problem of loss of network connection when tried to switch back to smb1.

I don't have an environment where I can test, I can only speculate.

Can you confirm that your admin used the method(s) outlined in http://www.petri.co.il/how-to-disable-smb-2-on-windows-vista-or-server-2008.htm to disable SMB2? Maybe if some other method was used, it completely disabled file sharing - or the network connection (?)

Again, it *should* only be necessary to disable SMB2 on the file server, all other computers (other servers or workstations) should then fall back to SMB1 when communicating with it.

One thing I don't know is if SMB2 is required for any sort of authentication or communication amongst servers or workstations in a Server 2008 domain. After googling for a little bit I haven't seen any posts to that effect; IOW a Server 2008 domain should be fully functional working via SMB1 (?)

I stumbled on an interesting and detailed thread at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/os_fileservices/thread/832d395b-6e6f-4658-8dbb-120138a4cd7c . It's a useful reference on various registry settings, if nothing else. Towards the end there's some testing that the MS employee interprets as working against local files, in which case he thinks SMB2 should not be involved. If that's the case, Thomas has a good idea, maybe you could put the data files on the Terminal Server computer (at least for testing). Again, if you have any real-time antivirus scanning on either server, you should disable it during your testing.

If you continue to have problems, one fallback option would be to keep using the old 2003 server. That might be the old physical server computer; or, these days, you can set up a VM (e.g. Hyper-V) and run the old server license on that. I think tools exist that let you migrate a server installation on physical hardware into a VM.