I don't think it's the novell client, as folks with and without the client,
and with all different versions of the client, are reporting the problem.
Rick, who made this claim, was never able to provide any substantiating
evidence. For us, it was the application of SP4 that caused the problem,
and that's the most frequent version of things that I've read.
Perhaps you missed this thread:
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Search Result 2
From: ljb (
[email protected])
Subject: Fix for slow right-click shortcut context menus, Win2k+SP4+Netware
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win2000.general
Date: 2003-10-01 18:49:08 PST
(OK, it's not a fix; more of a crude hack which works around the problem.
It's had minimal testing, works for me, use at your own risk, etc. Hope it
helps somebody out there.)
Description of the problem: Right-click over any shortcut (or quick-launch
toolbar icon). It takes about 10-25 seconds before the context menu pops
up. Try again, on the same or another shortcut, and it's fast. Wait about
5 minutes, and it is slow again. It happens on Windows 2000 SP4, but not
on Windows 2000 SP3. It happens with Netware Client 4.83, or 4.83+sp2, or
4.83+sp2+"update e". If you remove the Netware Client, it goes away.
What seems to be happening, based on Ethereal traces, is that the Netware
Client is trying to resolve the short-cut target's drive letter (usually
"C") as a network name. In my case, it tries IPX SAP, SLP, and Bindery,
making multiple requests (even though it gets negative replies, but that's
another problem) until it finally gives up.
My fix is based on Novell TID # 10065560 item 6, which tells how to
pre-load the Bad Server Name Cache with permanent entries for servers you
don't want to try to resolve. But I'm abusing this to preload the cache
with the letters A through Z. (I hope you don't have any servers on your
network with these names.) This appears to work around the bizarre behavior
of NWC 4.83 with Win2K SP4 trying to resolve drive letters on short-cuts as
if they were network names.
If you want to try the fix, import the .reg file below, or do it
manually as follows: Using regedt32, create a REG_MULTI_SZ value
called "BadServer" under the key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetwareWorkstation\Parameters
The data is the letters A through Z, each on a separate line.
Note: The change does not take effect until you reboot.
======== start badserver.reg ==========
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetwareWorkstation\Par
ameters]"BadServer"=hex(7):41,00,00,00,42,00,00,00,43,00,00,00,44,00,00,00,45,00,00,
00,\46,00,00,00,47,00,00,00,48,00,00,00,49,00,00,00,4a,00,00,00,4b,00,00,00,4c,\00,00,00,4d,00,00,00,4e,00,00,00,4f,00,00,00,50,00,00,00,51,00,00,00,52,00,\00,00,53,00,00,00,54,00,00,00,55,00,00,00,56,00,00,00,57,00,00,00,58,00,00,\
00,59,00,00,00,5a,00,00,00,00,00
======== end badserver.reg ==========