[RESOLVED] Network Troubleshooting Help Please..

Hello. I don't know if this is the right thread. Anyway, I have this network problem. We have installed and deployed a windows 2003 domain controller for a client. Active Directory was deployed, users where configured, file/printer sharing and permissions was done accordingly. We have been doing this for different clients for 4 years now with no problem.

The problem: A client of ours has a visual foxpro program that they use. We have deployed the foxpro database into the server and configured the access rights and permissions accordingly. They have been complaining to us as to why the network has been slowing down. They blame us and the network for the slowdown. However, file sharing and network printing is not affected by the slowdown. Is there a tool we can use to check the foxpro performance? Unfortunately for us we only use SQL server to analyze transaction loads. We are not familiar with Visual foxpro that uses dbf files as database. We strongly believe that the foxpro program is the problem and not the network. How can we prove it? Any suggestions? :(

Is there a tool we can sue that can monitor network bandwidth and load transaction for foxpro? We use SQL server Profiler for our SQL server performance testing. But for foxpro I don't have any idea how to monitor it's memory usage and network bandwidth usage. The only thing that I can think of as to why the foxpro program is so slow is because the programmer use "tablescan" method to add, edit, delete table transactions.

Any suggestions is highly appreciated.

What exactly is slowing down if file/printer resources are not affected? Do you mean that when they use their foxpro they see the application slow down?

If you want to prove to them that foxpro is to blame then uninstall it. That way if you set up everything right, you should be able to prove to them that the network is not slowing down anymore and it was foxpro.

Two things that you could use are NETWORK MONITOR & PERFORMANCE MONITOR. NM has to be installed from WINDOWS COMPONENTS in add/remove programs on the server. Then in a client pc, add the NETWORK MONITOR AGENT (I forget if that's the name) from the add/remove windows component as well. It's like a packet sniffer and will allow you to see how much bandwidth is being used.

The other is PM. It's in system tools folder. It gives you different counters to check. Normally, when you add services/programs to windows, if the program is well integrated, it will add its own counters. So chances are that you may have a foxpro counter to check.

Good luck.

Yes, printer file/printer resources are not affected. The client blames the network for the foxpro slowdown. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I will follow your instructions. thanks.