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There’s are common problems in Windows XP that can make network browsing very slow, and can make booting very slow.

- the "Computer Browse" service is looking for the "Browse Master". See Microsoft's Word file on this process, "Computer Browsing Overview"

Step 2) the registry, at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Services \Browser has a value called "Start". If the Computer Browser service is: Automatic, then Start = 2, Manual, then Start = 3, Disabled, then Start = 4. So in Regedit, make the following changes:

When you explore your Network Neighborhood or the Entire Network, the list of computers you see is provided by the Browse Master. The Browse Master is a designated computer that maintains the master list of computers in a given workgroup, as well as in other workgroups. So a home network can have a single PC that is designed as the "browse master". To find out which machine is your "Browse Master", run the Browse Master Monitor (Browmon.exe)

But what if another machine is the browse master, and when your machine boots - it has trouble communicating with the other machine? It will sit there for several minutes, at the Windows Logon screen, trying to figure out what to do. To see if this is happening to you, open the Event Viewer (Start/Run . . . %SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s ) click "System" and look for any "Warning" entries, particularly a warning that is followed by a long pause until the next event occurs. Here is an example - where my own machine was experiencing huge boot delays:

The "Warning" shows a "Browser" entry that took almost 4 minutes befoore the next event occurred - hmmmm . . .

Here's the problem - my Daughter's machine is acting as the "Browse Master" but there is some problem
either in communicating with her machine, or her machine is not doing the TCP/IP browsing properly

*** for Microsoft Help on Browser errors, see: 135404 and/or 188305 and/or 818092 (explains the NetBIOS Browsing Console, "NetCon.exe").

Browse Master Tools

NOTE: if you have domains, you can run Netcon - download here - Download the Browcon.exe package now.
You can download browstat here: http://www.dynawell.com/reskit/microsoft/win2000/browstat.zip or http://rescomp.stanford.edu/staff/manual/rcc/tools/browstat.zip
Browcon extracts to six files and you run setup to install it. Browstat is very small (40K), and needs no install. Just unzip the downloaded file, copy browstat.exe to any folder in the Path, and run it from a command window, by "browstat status". Make sure all computers give the same result.

Here are some other Networking tools to download:

Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tools - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927229

When you start a computer running Windows NT Workstation or Windows NT Server, the Browser service looks in the registry for the configuration parameter MaintainServerList to determine whether or not a computer will become a browser. This parameter is found under:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Services \Browser \Parameters

Parameter Value	Meaning
No	This computer will never participate as a browser.
Yes	This computer will become a browser. Upon startup, this computer attempts to contact the master browser to get a current browse list. If the master browser cannot be found, the computer will force a browser election. This computer will either be elected master browser or become a backup browser. Yes is the default value on a computer running Windows NT Server.
Auto	This computer, referred to as a potential browser, may or may not become a browser, depending on the number of currently active browsers. The master browser notifies this computer whether or not it will become a backup browser. Auto is the default value for computers running Windows NT Workstation.

On any computer with an entry of Yes or Auto for the MaintainServerList parameter, Windows NT Setup configures the Browser service to start automatically when the computer starts.

Another parameter in the registry, IsDomainMasterBrowser, helps to determine which servers become master browsers and backup browsers The registry path for this parameter is as shown below.

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Services \Browser \Parameters

Setting the IsDomainMasterBrowser parameter entry to True or Yes on a computer makes that computer a preferred master browser. A preferred master browser has priority over other computers in master browser elections. Whenever a preferred master browser starts, it forces a browser election.

Any computer running Windows NT Workstation or Windows NT Server can be configured as a preferred master browser. When the Browser service is started on the preferred master-browser computer, the Browser service forces an election. Preferred master browsers are given priority in elections, which means that if no other condition prevents it, the preferred master browser will always win the election. This gives an administrator the ability to configure a specific computer as the master browser.

To specify a computer as the preferred master browser, set the parameter entry for IsDomainMasterBrowser to True or Yes. Set the parameter in the following registry path:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Services \Browser \Parameters

Unless the computer is configured as the preferred master browser, the parameter entry will always be False or No. There is no user interface for making these changes; the registry must be modified.

If the 'My Network Places' folder contains a shortcut to a network share, then each refresh of the explorer window will attempt to read icon information from every file in the remote location, causing the system to slow to a crawl.

Removing all shortcuts from 'My Network Places' will return the system response to normal.

Every time you open a file via a UNC name, Windows XP will automatically add another shortcut to the 'My Network Places' folder - so the issue tends to get worse over time.

You can prevent the automatic addition of shortcuts by setting HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoRecentDocsNetHood to 1.

Q841978 - Explorer.exe stops responding when you use network shortcuts (XP)

Mapped Network Drives - create them the "Right way"

Similar issues affect the Start menu and Desktop - placing a shortcut to a network resource in either location can drastically slow down system response, particularly when the network resource is unavailable. Shortcuts to Domains or Machines don't suffer from these problems as they always have the same icon.

There are methods of accessing the network that will avoid this performance problem:

Method 1
Create a drive map and use this to browse the network files.

Method 2
Create a shortcut to explorer.exe and pass the UNC name of the resource.
e.g.
explorer /e, \\Server\FileShare

A second issue that will also slow down browsing is the desktop.ini feature. This affects Windows XP Sp1 clients using mapped drives or UNC connections.

When listing a directory Windows XP will search for and parse Desktop.ini files. This will noticably affect performance when a large number of subfolders are involved - it does this for the current folder and one level down the directory tree.

Desktop.ini can be used to provide a custom icon, thumbnail view, pop up description and background pattern.
In additions to this 'eye candy' desktop.ini can make normal file folders into 'Special Folders' (eg Fonts, History, Temporary Internet Files, "My Music", "My Pictures", and "My Documents").

Desktop.ini files are only visible in Windows Explorer if you first un-check "Hide protected operating system files" (under Tools, Options, View)

To see the file locks created by this process run the following command on the file server, while an XP client is (slowly) listing a large directory:

A quick solution to this performance problem is to delete the non-essential .ini files:

Before doing this in bulk you should compare your existing folders with some empty folders that don't have any desktop.ini files to see if this improves browsing response time:

To delete all desktop.ini files one level below the current directory run the following from the command line:

Other browsing issues
Also consider: AntiVirus software, DNS configuration, the NTFS volume (security descriptors & indexes) defrag and CHKDSK.

Browsing Network Neighbourhood is slow
Workstations which don't need Peer-to-Peer File, Print, or named-pipe sharing can disable the server service to reduce browse master traffic. This will also disable use of the admin$ share.