I’ve been trying to copy some files from my work PC to my home PC. That should be straightforward enough – after all they are both running Windows 7 (x64) with all current updates installed – but I frequently found that Windows Explorer would hang in the middle of a file copy. I found anecdotal evidence that disabling anti-virus software may help as the file filters can get in the way but my attempts to disable Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) were thwarted by the policies that my admins have, understandably, put in place.
It seems that certain versions of Symantec Endpoint Prevention (ahem…) Protection 11 have an issue with Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0 file copies. Disabling SMB 2.0 is one option, using the following commands on the client machine:
sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled
(I’m not sure if a reboot is required, but I rebooted anyway.)
Whilst this could potentially reduce performance of the file copy operation, I could that it did at least allow it to work. (There’s also an unofficial Symantec tool that can be used to disable/enable SMB 2.0 on Windows 7.)
Unfortunately, the copy process was still not flawless and several times a dialog box appeared warning about Error 0x8007046A: Not enough server storage is available to process this command. Restarting the Server service on the remote PC (net stop server, then net start server answering Y to continue the operation when prompted about existing sessions or dependant services such as Computer Browser or HomeGroup Listener) and then clicking Try Again on the client, let the copy process continue
Once the file copy was completed, I enabled SMB 2.0 again, using:
sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
sc config mrxsmb20 start= auto
Sadly, the lost time circumventing issues caused by security software doesn’t seem to be a criteria used by IT departments when considering their approach to desktop service provision, which is another reason I believe that a “dirty” network is not such a bad thing…
Or, install the fix that Symantec released 14 months ago.
Thanks for that John – I didn’t find a fix on my travels although, from and end-user perspective, I would have hoped that my admins would have ensure I’m on the most up-to-date release (or, even better, that LiveUpdate handled that for me).
I’m on 11.0.6100.645 (I know that there is a v12, but presumably that has an additional licensing cost over 11 that we have not yet been able to justify?) but, from a cursory glance at the Symantec website just now I see references to RU7 MP1, etc. which doesn’t help a whole lot to know if I’m up to date… looks like I need to go through those updates later to see which ones apply to my system.
I haven’t tested yet (need to understand why my admins haven’t applied the latest SEP updates) but it look as though the answer to my issue is in http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH139768 (as John hinted in his comment above). In fairness, this is linked from the Symantec forum post that I referenced; however the issue is also marked as still requiring a solution and it’s not unknown for users to still experience issues, even after a vendor has supposedly fixed their software.