text: Slowness on Windows XP Peer to Peer Network
  I am having intermittant slow response on one of the machines in a XP peer-to-peer network of just 5 computers.
  When working in a network application, the system will 'hourglass' and take up to a minute to respond. I can ping the host machine with no problem and a fast response. The client and host machines both have the same user name and password. ALso the slowness on the affected machine only occurs when running the network application. Other machines running this network application don't experience this slow response.
  Any ideas on how to isolate the problem?
  https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21369975/Slowness-on-Windows-XP-Peer-to-Peer-Network.html copy
  janderson131Asked: 2005-03-30
  sciwriterConnect With a Mentor Commented: 2005-03-30
  This kind of issue on simple P2P networks results from a "lost share" or a network resource that was once available, but no long is. That causes the networking and explorer to hang for 1-2 minutes until a time out decides this supposedly "crucial" resource is not available. It is a fundamental failing of windows networking NOT to fix and repair these issues dynamically, but the reality is, it does not.
  Go into the Prob. machine, Documents and settings / user name/ NetHood -- and delete everything that is there. Go to start, recent documents, and delete everything that is there too. Check EVERY icon on the desktop, right click, do properties, and make sure no network paths are listed -- then also do the same for Start Menu/Programs folders and application icons -- no network paths in ANY of them.
  \\missing machine\c\runapp.exe -- those will be the culprit. Now, on that machine, if you have any mapped drives, disconnect them. Then reboot and re-establish the mapped drives. If the problem continues, the next step is to remove all networking from the problem machine, everything in network properties, shut down, reboot, and reinstall it all. Sometimes this will fix it, often not, if the problem is in the registry -- which can also be fixed, but, alas, only manually, one by one.
  fixnixConnect With a Mentor Commented: 2005-03-30
  Usually 1-minute delayed responses are DNS issues.
  I've often run in to problems w/ XP machines in AD environments which were resolvable by pointing the XP machine to the AD server running DNS...obviously that's not your case in an XP peer to peer setup, but I'd suggest first checking that the problem machine is using the same nameservers as the ones not having a problem.