Slow Networking Issue

[ketalar]

Same problem here (build 673).

Is the tree visible?
Have you checked without tree?

- No, I did not.
BTW, are there problems with W8.1 and Samba server files ?

[Karol]

That was a nice hint
I always use the Details view, where it is slow.
I just tested with the List view and it works quite fast. However, this is not suitable for me. I do need the Details.

Have you defined your own "Column profiles" or you use default profile? If you use own profiles, could you check the default profile?

[joby_toss]

Update: I have just found the problem. It is the Owner field which I have displayed. When I switch it off, all versions of FC work just fine.

Maybe not everyone saw this edit.

[braykov]

Have you defined your own "Column profiles" or you use default profile? If you use own profiles, could you check the default profile?

I use the default profile, I have just added the Owner column at some point back in time.

[rodrigo]

I have solved this by creating "network drives" of Windows.
Because the possible connections that I have access from my station are few, I assigned them a drive letter in:

Tools > Conect to network drive...

(or directly in Windows).

For example, I assignt the letter "Y" to the the path "\\PC_2\Backups". From this moment, in both Windows Explorer and FreeCommander a new disk appears "Y:Backups(\\PC_2)".

When I click on "Y:" icon, immediately the tree is populated and files are available to be opened.
But if I click on the icon "1: Network", I have to wait forever.

Hopefully this trick works for you.

[dvrnr]

Same issue here.

Before I was using FC 2009 and i had no issues.

Now I am using XE 650 at work and the network folders take much longer time to load and, more problematically, to filter.

I have tried all kinds of solutions but nothing seems to work.

I have no "Owner" column, it doesnt matter whether I use FC or Win for network loading. The list/detailed view does not have any effect. The speed issue remains.

[Free4all]

Unfortunately, I have to concur. There is some sort of issue with FC and network folders.

Here's what I've tried:

• Adding a PathEditAutoCompleteSource=x entry to FreeCommander.ini, and trying values 0, 1, and 2
• Switching to List view
• Using default columns
• Turning the tree off
• Making sure there is no Owner column displayed
• Mapping a network folder to a drive letter
• Switching to 'Use Freecommander for network loading' in the settings

None of those tests, even in combination, fixes the issue.

It did seem like switching to List view and mapping a network folder to a drive letter helped a little. But list view isn't really very useful.

In all the cases, the title bar of FreeCommander will show "Not Responding". Trying to scroll in the active pane will not work. Clicking on the other pane will not work. The more files/folders inside the network folder, the worse the problem, it seems.

I tried Windows Explorer, and it had no issues.

Maybe this can be fixed?

[Free4all]

I would like to add that when testing these issues, it is important to take into account network and file system caching. Many of the workarounds appear to work a few times, but once the systems are rebooted, the slowness issues reappear.

[fjelsten]

I also find Freecommander very slow working with mapped network drives (especially copy/move operations) compared to Windows Explorer.

[Free4all]

I also find Freecommander very slow working with mapped network drives (especially copy/move operations) compared to Windows Explorer.

Yes, it's the only time I need to open Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer is so much faster that it winds up being worth the time to open up 2 Windows Explorer windows and align them in order to simulate FreeCommander.

[fjelsten]

Is this a known problem? That the UI hangs for 2-3 seconds doing copy, move or delete operations.

Can something be done about it? I work a lot with networked drives and it severely limits the usability.

[jbosma]

I would like to add my remark that the issue of slow network drive access is a daily annoyance.

There does seem to be a caching issue involved. The first access to a network folder is very slow, generally taking 10~20 seconds but sometimes even more if the folder has more than a few dozen files. (We have some networked folders with a few hundred subfolders and files and those can take more than a minute to open.) Subsequent accesses to the same folder during the same login session tend to be much faster.

My environment is a small company system, an NT domain that is all on a single LAN subnet. There are around 75 network clients with 4 or 5 of those being Windows Server hosts that export a few dozen network shares.

While I typically access our network drives using a UNC path, I have also tried mapping the drive and it does not seem to make a consistent difference.

My default column setup is a "details" view including the file extension. I believe that using the "list" view is somewhat faster. So the problem might be in enumerating the files. However I like to sort files by extension, which isn't possible in "list" view. Windows Explorer of course does not support sorting by extension but in the closest approximation, sorting by Type, it performs without delay.

I am using 64-bit FreeCommanderXE and generally keep it up to date with the latest donor release. Right now I am using build 721, but I have not noticed any improvement since I began using the XE version. I don't remember for sure when that was, but probably around 2 years ago. Maybe this is something that is just difficult to fix, but I don't recall it being such a problem with the old FreeCommander before XE.

This is by far my biggest issue with FreeCommander. Other than this, FC is so superior to Explorer that I grumble and complain when I have to switch to someone else's computer that does not have FC installed.

[fjelsten]

I wonder if this will ever be fixed.

It seems like this is an inherit problem with FC. I have not had these problems in any other file manager, nor in Explorer. Since the developer is totally silent here, I fear we will never get a fix for this.

It's such a shame because I am seriously contemplating becoming a life-time donor. For this to happen, however, I need SFTP and this problem fixed. This is a pledge!

[Marek]

Unfortunatelly in my small network and in few other networks I can access - I see no problems with the speed of the folder reading.
It is a bit slower as local drive but the speed is the same as other file managers and Windows Explorer.
So for me it is difficult to fix the problem so long I can not reproduce it.

[fjelsten]

Hi Marek

Thank you for your reply. I am not certain that it's a folder access issue for me. It's more on file operations (copy/move) FC often freezes for 5 secs before beginning the file operation. The whole UI is locked/white/frozen.