Windows 7 and Time Capsule

Had another go at this today. I changed a few settings on Windows - although to be honest I've changed so many now that I don't have a change list :/

Anyway, this time I have gone into control panel "programs and features" and then into "turn windows features on or off"

I turned off:

tablet pc components
windows gadget platform
windows search <-- only likely change to have actually had an effect

I had already disabled the indexing service in there.

then I mapped the TC using "<tc_name>/admin" as the username and using the TC admin password.

For the time being, I can now transfer files and traverse the directory structure without any errors.

Now, I'm not hopeful at-all that this has 100% resolved the issue, but it does maybe fit in with other peoples successful experiences with using third party programs to transfer files.

My reasoning is that it appears that windows appears to be making many connections to the TC (hence the long list of SMB/CIFS login entries in the TC log) when just accessing the TC - maybe its indexing them at the same time? Maybe its having problems scanning/indexing large files over slower wireless connections and stuffing up the filecopy? If so, whats the difference between windows search and Indexing service...

Without busting out some sysinternals tools and looking into it I guess I'll never know, but it seems that by using an alternative filecopy tool (not windows explorer) people are having limited, intermittent success.

I don't think I've solved it at all - but hopefully found a pointer in the direction of the problem. It's obviously not an authentication issue, as we've fixed that by changing the LM authentication policy - and the fact we can see files at all. It looks more like there's an issue with the number of connections to the TC from a single host - either the TC badly handles requests, Windows is making too many requests, or a mixture of both. This usually ties up with there being lots of "SMB/CIFS login successful" messages being spammed which originate the same windows host in the TC log...

Message was edited by: Rob BW

I've used the TC all afternoon during a long overdue tidy up of stuff off the win7 pc, and it hasn't failed on me yet. I've transferred gigs worth of separate files, and a few gigs worth of 2GB+ files too. Directory traversing is rapid, and file transfers are occurring at 7Mbps+ according to windows. It's also solid when accessing a 2GB filesystem container too.

I'd be interested in other peoples experiences.

Holy crap, I think you've done it! I disabled the same Windows features you mentioned above, and although I have only played with it for a few minutes, it appears to finally be working. Prior to this change, navigating the directories on the remote hard drive was painfully slow, and copying a file to the drive would never work, even small ones. Now I can navigate the directories with almost the same speed as my local hard drive, and I just copied over a 90MB file in about 30 seconds.

Thank you! I will keep testing and report here if I encounter any more failures.

Nice work willowthedog. Glad to see you've had some success.

I'd be chuffed to bits if this did actually fix it 100% (although as I say above, I'd be surprised if it did). I've posted a link to a thread over at macrumors ( http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=9132330#post9132330) to see if there is anybody there that could try it out as well and give some feedback too.

Finger crossed....

Here is my reply to your post at the macrumors site (in case people dont visit that forum):

I'll be ******! I turned off "Windows Search" and restarted the computer. I have been moving files back and forth (sizes ranging from 10KB to 1.2GB) between the desktop and TC and it's working fine. I dont want to jinx it, but if it works like this it's great!

By the way, I am using the most recent refresh of the 2TB TC (firmware 7.5 I believe) and Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. I didn't "map the TC". I am just opening it from My Computer and so far it works. I'll schedule some backups now to see if Windows is able to access and use the TC as a back up drive. We'll see...

Thanks!

OK - so this is my first post on these forums.

I have troubleshooted my way through this and have seemingly managed to get it working using the solution provided a few posts ago. I figured his explanation was a little vague for the average user, and so I wanted to provide a good solid reference for the thousands of people who will no doubt stumble across this annoyance in the coming months as Windows 7 becomes mainstream.


PT 1. SWITCHING OFF WINDOWS SEARCH

Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs & Features

Then on the right-hand side, click "Turn Windows features on/off"

Scroll down, and de-select "Windows Search".

Press OK, close all windows and restart.

Annoyingly, this is one of the defining features of Windows 7. Typing in files/keywords into the Start Menu much like Finder on OSX - so I'm disappointed it needs to be turned off for this to work!

PT 2. MAPPING THE DRIVES

If you've already broken the network connection with the drives you need to restart or log out and then log in again. You need it to be on the network and not ****-blocking you for this to work.

For those who don't know how to do this - if you've already installed Airport Utility you'll need to "virtually" disconnect / unmap the drive from My Computer. You can do this by right clicking the time-capsule mapped drive (Y or Z: or something) and then select "Disconnect".

Once you've done that, on the right hand side of My Computer scroll down to where you see "Network", click it.

Then when all of the computers finish being recognised you should see your Time Capsule appear as a network computer. Double click it to see your folders inside.

Now right click the Time Capsule folder and select "Add Connection" or "Map Network Drive". Tick "reconnect at log on" and "use different credentials". This is where you enter "admin" and whatever password you use to access your Time Capsule.

If you get an error: "Drive hasn't been disconnected can't change credentials", log-off and then log-on again, then Ctrl AltDelete into Task Manager and close the Apple Utility before it connect to the drives. If it does anyway, just close the app and 'disconnect' the drives as specified earlier.

I think that about covers the general experience.

Simply put, it's not a Time Capsule issue (which is hard to believe) - it's actually an issue with the way that Windows 7 sends files over networks. Maybe it's more secure, maybe it's more efficient? Who knows - the reality is even if it worked on earlier firmwares it would've been at the compromise of other features / reliability / security.. So provided that all it takes is independent drive mapping and turning windows search off, I can handle it - provided I can backup/reference files across 3-4 machines using the TimeCapsule and an added USB drive (formatted HFS+ btw).

Will post if I experience any other issues.

Good luck to everyone else!

Nice work again... Seems that disabling windows search is fixing it for a couple more people now.... Good advice from AphidNZ too. I guess some people are going to be using the Airport Utility and may not know how to browse to a UNC or map a drive.

Its also worth mentioning that in order to remove TC user and password details that are remembered by windows7, you should go into control panel, and load "credential manager". If you've already mapped a TC drive and chose the option to save credentials, then it'll be saved in here. You will have to delete the saved entries (only for your TC!) in here before you will be prompted for a username and password to the TC again.

I still see this as a workaround though - Who's expected to provide a fix, and who will provide a fix, will be interesting to see.

I seriously hope that someone does, and as soon as possible. I just realised it's not just the start menu, but searching [at all] in Windows that's now been disabled.

FFFFFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR

Hmmm..

Good thing that I dont use Windows Search AT ALL 😀

So far, it is working for me without mapping the drive. If it disconnects again, I'll map it to see if that helps.

At the moment, the Win7 desktop is performing its first backup (using the built-in backup component) to the TC. During the setup process, I picked network locations, located TC and entered credentials as "admin" and my password (I was informed that a disk image would not be saved to this location since the drive was not NTSF).

It is scheduled to perform daily backups; let's hope that this goes as planned...

Yep, that's the annoying side affect of disabling that feature. It looks like the search facility is indexing or something even if you have indexing switched off.

I wonder if you can touch a file on the TC to prevent Windows Search from attempting to access it (like in spotlight)... from a first search it doesnt look good, but there must be a way of excluding it from within windows maybe...

Either way though this is an interop problem that Apple and Microsoft have to work out together. Microsoft should be interested, as "Windows Search" is a big deal for them with Server 2008R2.

I still think that the TC is running out of connections though, as its similar to when an NFS server runs out of allowed nfsd threads - windows appears to be just handling it badly. I'd speculate that a multithreaded windows explorer copy + a multithreaded windows search scan is tipping it over the limit. Command line file copies, and file manager type utilities are probably going to be slower, single threaded file copies, so are being kinder to the TC.

Macs wont necessarily get the issue as it uses native AFP, but samba on the TC (or the TC's system resources) may be limiting CIFS connections.

Either way, we won't be able to tell unless you can root into the TC and see some logs or conf files.

All we can hope for is a fix from Apple or MS on this one.

I've struggled and struggled and struggled with this. Have tried mapping this drive countless times in Windows 7 -- I feel like I'm farther away than most. All I can get is Error Code 0x80070043 (The Network Name Cannot Be Found) when trying to map the drive.

What are most of you using under the "File Sharing" tab? With Accounts, With a Disk Password, or With A Device Password?

I can see my disk in the "disks" tab -- but I simply cannot map out to the drive. It's incredibly frustrating.

Message was edited by: reconceive

Reporting back....

Last night, I scheduled a full back of the Desktop running Win7. It took about 6 hours and there was no connection problems. In order to test if it will continue to operate as planned, I changed the daily backup time and just watched how it went. Backup process started at 4:00PM, TC was "woken up" from sleep, and in about 4 minutes, altered files were saved to TC without any problems. In addition, I tried more manual file transfers between the TC and PC using different file sizes, etc etc. Everything worked fine. I am hoping that this was "the" trick that we've been waiting for.

Since I dont use Windows Search, this works great for me. Of course, if you rely on Windows Search, then this may not be very practical.

Good luck!

Message was edited by: tenderidol

Man! job well done!

My solution before this was using the pre-RC1 version Win7.7100, without turning off "search" or any other significant change to the system, it works great with airport&Time Capsule. of course, the potential sideaffect is obvious---it's not 7600, but who knows....

i disabled windows search and mine is working, and i would just like to thank everyone for getting mine to work!.