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"My Network Places" Freezes (hangs) and Drops Connections

By
Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Preferred

I had been dealing with a recent problem with the main router in my office and was not sure if it was in any way contributing to an ongoing and very frustrating problem that occurred whenever "My Network Places" was viewed in Windows (XP Pro) Explorer on computers in the local network.  

When you opened up Explorer, in the left column window you should see "My Network Places".  If you opened it up (clicked on it to expand it's contents), you should have see all the attached devices (computers, printers, etc.) that were on the local area network. 

In my case I either could not see all the devices and when I clicked on "My Network Places" it would freeze ("lock up") Windows Explorer. After I resolved the main router problem, the "My Network Places" situation still existed.

So I had to do some more investigation within my hardware, Windows and applications that were running to try to isolate the cause(s) of the problems.


Eventually, I was able to discover and correct two additional non-router causes of the "My Network Places" issues:

1. McAfee Security Suite's Network Manager ("Manage Network") function.

Although I could not find any reporting about it, McAfee Security Suite's, available free to all Comcast cable subscribers turn out to be the problem as it's Network Manager feature was causing the attached network devices to not show up.  Evidently, the Netowrk Manager function was having problems when IP address changed as a result of dynamic DHCP assignment of IP addresses and/or devices were attached/detached/reattached on the network.  

McAfee was would not provide any details about the cause of the problem with their software, but their radical solution was to uninstall all versions of their Security Suite on all devices and reinstall, making sure not to run the Network Manager function. 

After this was completed on ALL attached computers running this software that were attached to the network, all the connections eventually reappeared under "My Network Places".

Note: In the process I also had to go in and make sure drive shares were properly set.


2. Microsoft's UPnP User Interface feature.

At one point when struggling with not being able to see all the network devices under "My Network Places", I turned on Microsoft Windows UPnP User Interface feature to help access some of the attached devices.  It helped a little, but I was always concerned with activating it as it is considered a security risk, and I will still not seeing it under "My Network Places".
 
After resolving the other issues with my router and with McAfee Security Suite, I still encountered Windows Explorer "freezing" or "locking up" whenever I clicked on "My Network Places".  After some more digging around I came across some brief discussion in a technical forum that indicated it could by caused by the activation of the UPnP feature in Windows.
 
And sure enough, after inactivating and undoing any related setting, the problem was fixed: "My Network Places" no longer freezes when I click on it in Windows Explorer.
 
Here are few resource links that were related to the UPnP problem:
My Network Places Freezes Up
What's The Big Deal About UPnP In Windows XP?
You cannot access shared files and folders or browse computers in the workgroup with Windows XP





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