I have a desktop PC that serves as a local NAS using samba. When transferring “large” files (2+ GB) between this server and my laptop using explorer, my network appears to crash.
What’s weird is that if I right-click and use “cast to device”, I can stream movies/tv shows to my TV for hours on end without any issues (never crashed doing this).
Unfortunately I’m away for Christmas, so I can’t check/test anything. But I was wondering if anyone’s experienced this, or knows of a few solutions.
- Router: Pakedge WR-1
- Laptop: Windows 11
- NAS: Ubuntu Desktop 20.04
Any powersave on your laptop networking device(s)? If there is no mouse or KB activity while transferring, that’s a possible cause. Longshot, but we had a series of issues (drops and network connection issues) with Dell laptops using “Killer” Wifi. That was fixed with latest driver update.
What errors do you see, if any? Anything in the Event log?
This worked to clear up errors I had on Win 10, I don’t have 11.
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Find “Turn Windows features on or off” and disable “Remote Differential Compression API Support” check box.
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On your source drive, right click and go to Properties. On General tab, uncheck the “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed…” box, then apply changes to all files.
Wait for the drive activity to fall off, then reboot.
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As @shadragon said, disabling might help some things, as well as updating drivers.
What do you mean, the network crashes? what happens?
What are the specs of the laptop, and NAS? If you happen to have an intel i225v nic, there are some serious issues with the various revisions of that. You’ll want to disable EEE wherever you can (switch, and end devices)
Are you sure your storage in the NAS can keep up?
Are you using wired or wifi on the laptop?
@shadragon I haven’t ever had to disable Remote Differential Compression API Support, I’m just curious about what you saw that led to that? Just want to know what to look out for in the event I might need to, lol.
Yeah, I picked a bad time to ask, as I can’t test any fixes until I’m back, doh. Anyway, it’s always hard to debug generic network issues, so I just wondered if anyone had seen similar problems. If it helps, this issue was present when using my old laptop too
Old laptop: Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2018)
New laptop: Thinkpad X1E (2022)
NAS:
- J3455B-ITX motherboard/cpu combo (~$30 on eBay)
- SAS9211-8I 8PORT Int 6GB Sata+SAS Pcie 2.0
- 8 HDDs (NTFS, JBODs)
- 1 SSD (boot drive)
- Wired since I could never get wireless to work
I plan to upgrade this setup soon, but that’s a topic for another thread 
What do you mean, the network crashes? what happens?
The scenario goes as follows:
- I open explorer and browse to the Samba share over WiFi
- I copy a file and paste it somewhere on the laptop
- The file copies fine until ~2GB in
- The speed nosedives to 0 bytes/sec in explorer
- The Windows WiFi icon on my laptop says “no internet”
- I’m unable to use the internet/network for a few minutes
ok.
I’d update your drivers first off.
Did you check the event* viewer for and errors?
@NoncarbonatedClack I had a series of frozen file transfers on my 10GB home lab network and that was one of the solutions suggested by searching for those symptoms. Large multi-GB file would get to 15-30% and just stop. If you use RDP then you may have issues turning this off, but for me it worked a treat as I do everything remote over VMWare Workstation.
This was not the article I used, but is similar.
I probably should re-enable and test again as I’ve rearchitected almost everything network wise since and have updated several drivers.
@Dr.ShrimpPuertoRico One other thing. If using Wifi and Ethernet, disable one or the other and see if that helps. Seen issues with simultaneous connections on Windows.
@shadragon interesting, thanks for the info.
@Dr.ShrimpPuertoRico This is a total longshot, but disabling fast startup might (or might not) help. At the very least, it helps in the long run.
Control panel → Large/Small icon view → Power options → choose what the power buttons do → click the hyperlink “Change settings that are currently unavailable” → untick the box next to Turn On Fast startup.
Don’t believe it when it says it doesn’t affect restarts. it lies.
After this, reboot. it might take a while if you have a hard drive instead of an SSD
Windows has lied since 3.1. It’s the longest abusive relationship I’ve ever had. 
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saaammeess.
I’ve seen JUST disabled fast startup fix so many issues, that I stopped keeping a list of what it fixed.