Hi all,

This is a puzzler, so please bear with the long discussion...

Problem:

One of my clients just upgraded their network to a new, well-equipped Dell server running 2000 Server SP3. The problem is that one workstation running Win2000 has much slower VFP screen instantiation than other Win 98 workstations, even though it is newer and better equipped. A representative screen that loads in 7 seconds on an older Win98 machine takes 23 seconds on the Win2000 one. (The screen has a 4 page pgf and several cboBoxes with SQL queries that take little while over the network). Other screens seem equally as slow.

Situation:

-- The entire network is about 10 PCs total with the VFP app installed locally but accessing data tables shared on the file server. They are running VFP 7 runtimes installed locally. The problem PC is a fairly new 1.8 Ghz machine running Win2000 SP3 with 256MB ram and several Gigs free disk space. A much older Win98 Pentium II with only 64 MB ram and .8 Gig free disk space loads screens 2-3x as fast. All machines have the same network protocols installed.

-- Thinking the problem Win2000 machine may have a slower network connection than the other machines, we tried copying a large file to it from the server. It actually has a faster connection, copying the large file in 35 seconds vs. 60 for the W98 machine.

-- So maybe it is within VFP that the processing is slower. We tried identical large report queries on each machine, and again the Win2000 was faster at 35 seconds vs 65 seconds (almost matching the raw speed advantage it has over the network).

-- Maybe it has too much memory, so we tried limiting it with sys(3050,1,48000000) and smaller, with no change.

-- After reviewing other UT discussions, we tried disabling Norton AV with no change.

-- Maybe it is something about VFP's general processing under Win2000, so we copied the entire database locally and the screens loaded almost instantly. This seems to rule out local video and memory issues on the machine.

-- Other non-VFP applications on the Win2000 machine seem to be quick, including those that are network intensive.

-- A second Win2000 machine also appears to run the VFP application slower, although we haven't fully tested it.

-- Search of Microsoft KB for "slow" anything doesn't find much but Norton AV references.


CONCLUSION:

It looks like the Win2000 has faster everything (cpu, ram, disk, network connection) and still instantiates screens slower than almost pathetically old machines. Any ideas would be appreciated. We're considering the $245 support call to MS (:( .

TIA,

Larry