Crash when browsing network drive over VPN

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

Hi all,

On a Windows XP Pro SP2 computer, I tried various times to do the following:
1) Connect to a VPN. This seemed to work perfectly.
2) Map a network drive by right-clicking on "My Computer", choosing "Map
network drive...", filling in as the folder "\\xx.xxx.xxx.xx\some folder"
(with xx.xxxx.xxx.xx the IP address of the computer on the network I wanted
to access) and using different credentials (specifying a username and
password manually).
3) An Explorer window opened, allowing me to browse the network drive.
4) After entering a folder containing a few executables, I tried selecting
one by single, left-clicking on it.
5) The computer went bananas: though XP is normally really stable here,
Explorer just stopped responding completely; nothing helped (trying to log
out, Ctrl+Alt+Del, waiting ten minutes); I was forced to use the Power button
:-(
6) This happens all the time...

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problems?
Thanks a lot in advance!

Yours sincerely,

Onno Broekmans

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

Onno Broekmans wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> On a Windows XP Pro SP2 computer, I tried various times to do the
> following: 1) Connect to a VPN. This seemed to work perfectly.
> 2) Map a network drive by right-clicking on "My Computer", choosing
> "Map network drive...", filling in as the folder
> "\\xx.xxx.xxx.xx\some folder" (with xx.xxxx.xxx.xx the IP address of
> the computer on the network I wanted to access) and using different
> credentials (specifying a username and password manually).
> 3) An Explorer window opened, allowing me to browse the network drive.
> 4) After entering a folder containing a few executables, I tried
> selecting one by single, left-clicking on it.
> 5) The computer went bananas: though XP is normally really stable
> here, Explorer just stopped responding completely; nothing helped
> (trying to log out, Ctrl+Alt+Del, waiting ten minutes); I was forced
> to use the Power button :-(
> 6) This happens all the time...
>
> Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problems?

Can you open a file, not an application/executable? I'd be surprised if you
could launch a remote app very easily over VPN. Try opening a text file,
Word doc, etc....

> Thanks a lot in advance!
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Onno Broekmans

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

> Can you open a file, not an application/executable? I'd be surprised if you
> could launch a remote app very easily over VPN. Try opening a text file,
> Word doc, etc....

Sorry, I think I haven't described my problem correctly. I'm not trying to
launch the executable, I'm just trying to copy the file (which happens to be
an executable, but I think I should perhaps have left that detail out of my
description) to my own computer. Selecting the file (by single-clicking)
causes the computer to 'hang'.

Yours sincerely,

Onno Broekmans

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

"Lanwench MVP - Exc" wrote:
> Onno Broekmans wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > On a Windows XP Pro SP2 computer, I tried various times to
> do the
> > following: 1) Connect to a VPN. This seemed to work
> perfectly.
> > 2) Map a network drive by right-clicking on "My Computer",
> choosing
> > "Map network drive...", filling in as the folder
> > "\xx.xxx.xxx.xxsome folder" (with xx.xxxx.xxx.xx the IP
> address of
> > the computer on the network I wanted to access) and using
> different
> > credentials (specifying a username and password manually).
> > 3) An Explorer window opened, allowing me to browse the
> network drive.
> > 4) After entering a folder containing a few executables, I
> tried
> > selecting one by single, left-clicking on it.
> > 5) The computer went bananas: though XP is normally really
> stable
> > here, Explorer just stopped responding completely; nothing
> helped
> > (trying to log out, Ctrl+Alt+Del, waiting ten minutes); I
> was forced
> > to use the Power button :-(
> > 6) This happens all the time...
> >
> > Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problems?
>
> Can you open a file, not an application/executable? I'd be
> surprised if you
> could launch a remote app very easily over VPN. Try opening a
> text file,
> Word doc, etc....
>
> > Thanks a lot in advance!
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> >
> > Onno Broekmans

I agree with Lanwench MVP. You can launch exe/apps remotely but over
VPN it is seriously memory consuming. Even more so if your using
remote computer is being connected to over the internet... The best
solution would be to copy the exe/app you want to the local machine...

More detail of your infrastructure would be useful thou...

Are you just VPN’ing into another workstation on your network?? or are
you doing it from a different network? If so what connection speed
does both ends have, if in a single LAN why VPN? Just map a network
drive..

Does the network your VPN’ing into have a server? If yes what OS?

Stuff like the above, but i’m sure i’ve missed stuff out.

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[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

Hi Brodieman,

Thanks for your reply!
I forgot to say that I'm not trying to launch the executable (see my reply
to Lanwench's post), just trying to copy the file to my computer. I think the
fact that it happens to be an executable is irrelevant, though I'm not sure.

> More detail of your infrastructure would be useful thou...

Yeah, you're right, sorry about that 😱) Let me answer some of your questions:

> Are you just VPN’ing into another workstation on your network??

I'm trying to VPN into a 'simple' (no domain) network consisting of 3
Windows XP Pro SP2 computers in another location. My own computer (WinXP Pro
SP2) is member of a different 'simple' network (different network ID).

> If so what connection speed
> does both ends have

Both have quite fast DSL connections to the internet.

> Does the network your VPN’ing into have a server? If yes what OS?

Nope, they're just 'plain' WinXP Pro computers networked together in the
'home network' style.

After making the VPN connection (which seems to work OK), I'm trying to view
one of the disks of one of the computers; this disk is shared. Since the
disk's network share is protected, I'm using "Map network drive" to force
logging on to the other computer using manually specified credentials. This
works, and I can then view the disk's contents.
However, after opening one of the folders on the (remote) disk and merely
*selecting* the file to copy, the whole computer just freezes completely, not
even responding to me trying to kill the Explorer process via Ctrl+Alt+Del!

Yours sincerely,

Onno Broekmans

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

Onno Broekmans wrote:
>> Can you open a file, not an application/executable? I'd be surprised
>> if you could launch a remote app very easily over VPN. Try opening a
>> text file, Word doc, etc....
>
> Sorry, I think I haven't described my problem correctly. I'm not
> trying to launch the executable, I'm just trying to copy the file
> (which happens to be an executable, but I think I should perhaps have
> left that detail out of my description) to my own computer. Selecting
> the file (by single-clicking) causes the computer to 'hang'.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Onno Broekmans

Gotcha. Does the same thing happen with a .txt file, etc?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

"Onno Broekmans" <OnnoBroekmans@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:17E472E1-E4D0-4C18-A233-9DFE2D4F3F4D@microsoft.com
>
> However, after opening one of the folders on the (remote) disk and
> merely *selecting* the file to copy, the whole computer just freezes
> completely, not even responding to me trying to kill the Explorer
> process via Ctrl+Alt+Del!

Did the computer actually freeze, or was it just very very busy?

For instance, if you have an anti-virus product, when you touch the remote
file by selecting it with Explorer, an anti-virus scan might take place of
the remote EXE file. If it was a self-extracting EXE, this anti-virus scan
might include unpacking the whole file into its constituent parts; all over
the VPN link.

Try again with any anti-virus or anti-malware product disabled. If there is
now no problem, then try re-enabling it with changed configuration settings.

--
Robin Walker
rdhw@cam.ac.uk

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

> Try again with any anti-virus or anti-malware product disabled. If there is
> now no problem, then try re-enabling it with changed configuration settings.

Woohoo! Thanks a lot; that did the trick...

Yours sincerely,

Onno Broekmans