Windows explorer freezes in Windows 10/11 with network drive (probably IPv6 related)

Question

Hello,

It's been many years now I have this problem with window explorer: randomly after boot i get red X on network drive and if I click on it, the window explorer freezes. Had this problem since 2018 I think, when I had Windows 10 and my old PC. Then in 2020 I changed PC and installed Windows 11 in new installation and it kept happening.

Not only windows explorer freezes, but also other programs have problems if I try to access Windows file menu, like the "save as.." button.

I think it's network configuration related, since all this problems disappear instantly if I disable and reenable the network interface of the PC. The window explorer instantly unfreezes and I can access network drive then till the next reboot.

I have IPv6 and IPv4 both configured on the PC interface and the network drive is mounted using DNS that has IPv6 and IPv4 addess. I tried setting Static IP on the pc network interface and using DHCP, that changes nothing.

Is anything like that happened to any of you? I will leave using IPv4 only as last resort....

Posted this question also here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_11-wintop_connect/windows-explorer-freezes-in-windows-1011-with/e6448a71-bda2-43d9-ab5f-c662500b9029?messageId=fe2064bb-9ca8-4b71-b9e7-812ba1796bbf

Answer 1

Hello,

 

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

To further troubleshoot this issue, we would suggest checking the SMB configuration first:

1.Run get-smbclientconfiguration on your windows client and take a screenshot.

2.Run get-smbserverconfiguration on your file server and check the configuration.

3.Compare if there's any smb configuration difference.

4.Remap the network drive and see if issue persists.

5.Start network monitor or wireshark and reproduce the issue (click the red cross). After one minute stop the capture and save the network trace. Please check if there's any insights we can get from the trace.

Best regards，

Jill Zhou

 

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Answer 2

It seems the problem solved by itself after a while.

I continued to apply updates to my PC and SMB server, but apart from that I changed nothing. My bet is that was some fix on IPv6 on Windows side that solved, but hard to tell.