I have a directory on my Ubuntu 9.04 machine shared via Samba, but accessing it is very slow (XP Home). It seems to take about 10 seconds to load a 3 MB image.
How can I determine the cause, and speed it up?
I'd start by comparing transfer speeds on your network outside of the share - maybe via FTP? That'll help figure out where the problem lies.
for XP try:
Try disabling the Web client Service.
Microsoft puts a task schedule key into the registry. So, if you view a network share, it checks the computer with the share for scheduled tasks it might be running. With Samba, this doesn't work and creates a delay. To remove it from winxp registry, do the following...
Delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace/{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} registry key. After you restart your machine, XP will no longer check for scheduled tasks. You should notice a big performance improvement!