Windows 7 / Windows XP: Getting them to play nicely with each other.

WARNING - technical content. Proceed at your own risk.


One of the not-so-wonderful things about moving to a new computer system is that things don't always work as expected...

Case# 3425:    Windows XP machines intermittently lose their connection to Windows 7 file shares.

Lots of people have been talking about this problem with what seems like limited success. Most mention turning off HomeGroup sharing, or turning off the requirement for passwords, etc.

We tried all the popular suggestions but still had the problem. Then I stumbled upon an article talking about EventID 2017 on the Win7 box. Within the article are instructions on tweaking your Windows 7 registry to make the computer function more like a file server. Well, since yesterday when we made the changes mentioned in the article, our intermittent problem has gone away. Sweet!

Now - if you haven't looked at the Windows 7 registry in a long time (or ever), it is probably best to just call your computer guy. Changing the registry should not be taken lightly.

If, however, you are intimately familiar with the Windows registry, you may continue.

Source:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/b8b33345-3998-4e24-80b5-ae54bad1f15b


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"Apparently you need to tell Windows that you want to use the machine as a file server and that it should allocate resources accordingly.

Set the following registry key to ‘1′:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

and set the following registry key to ‘3′:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size

After making these changes and restarting, I haven’t seen this issue arise again."
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