Jim:

I haven't heard of any complaints about Norton Autoprotect slowing things down at server level -- I personally witnessed the problem and found the solution at a UC Berkeley department -- all I did was turn off AutoProtect at the workstation and my app sprung to life. I honestly don't even know if they had a separate Norton protection running on the server. Note: I had to disable AutoProtect alltogether, disabling DBF, CDX and FPT checking did not help any.

I basically told my clients that if they want fast program loading and database opening, they need to disable Autoprotect while the app loads (I tend to open all tables in the beginning and leave them open for that particular app). It's tricky, because who's to say the user remembers to turn it back on, and if they don't, a virus could sneak in.

The vast majority of the other 100+ clients are either not running AutoProtect, or they are not running the system multiuser under Win2K and Norton Autoprotect. Maybe Symantec has already fixed this problem, who knows? I read somewhere that some Delphi programs had the same problem in the same place, but haven't been able to confirm this (there are only so many hours in the day, and most of them I have to use to earn a living rather than testing various software combinations <g>)

So, no silver bullet here, I'm afraid. Try using the latest version of Norton, and maybe that will resolve the problem. Also, I have not seen this problem with XP.

Pertti

>Dear Pertti,
>
>With Norton, are you disabling the the DBF, CDX and FPT on the server also? If you disable just the client side Autoprotect the server still will run its version of Norton.
>
>To solve your speed prolem on the 100 clients did you have them disable Autoprotect?
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim Smith
>>Jim:
>>
>>You mention optimistic file buffering, which of course is not available in FoxPro 2.6 -- are you using VFP or FPW2.6?
>>
>>The only speed related thing I have found has to do with Norton Antivirus AutoProtect. If it is enabled, the first user to run the program is fine, but any subsequent users on a network server start up slow as (my old) dog. It is also slow whenever somebody needs to open a file that is already in use by another workstation. The problems seems to be with how Norton checks for viruses in shared files that are already in use. As soon as I disabled AutoProtect the additional users got in. Interestingly enough, disabling AutoProtect on DBF, FPT and CDX files did not speed things up at all. You have to disable the entire AutoProtect. Which, of course, is not desirable (or even allowed by the network administrators) in most situations.
>>
>>I haven't run into any other speed problems on Win2K systems so far, and I have at least 100 clients running the old foxpro 2.6 programs under Win2K, so if there were other problems, I'd probably have heard about them by now.
>>
>>
>>Pertti
>>
>>>Dear Pertti:
>>>
>>>Did you uncover a resolution to your speed issues? Optimistic file buffering on WIN2k servers seems to cause a significant decrease in performance.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>Jim Smith
>>>>Yes.
>>>>
>>>>I am currently trying out various things, but still looking for a good solution. The thing is, some Win2K systems run FPW26 apps extremely fast, some are dogs.
>>>>
>>>>i will keep you posted if/when I find the culprit(s). Please you do the same <s>.
>>>>
>>>>Pertti