Some tips on troublshooting a real network issue

Hi I was wondering if you guys could give some insights on this problem i am currently facing.

I got a small group of ppl not able to access a certian network drive.They residing in the 1st and 2nd floor.The users are on different subnet. Problem the users face is that when they want to access a network drive, it takes a long time for the network drive to be accessed.

Sometimes the system just hangs.The router settings fine but i didn;t reboot the router.What i did was switch the group of users from one switch to another switch.Pls note that its a flat switch meaning there is no VLANS created for this.Even tried to reboot the switch.Next day the users says the problem is solve and starts again the next day or at the end of the same day.

They also seem to get a file permission error when they try to access the files or try to save a working document on the network drive.Checked with the system admin and he told me that the permissons are fine.

Any ideas on how to check whether its a network issue or server issue.It would be helpful for me to narrow down.

Anyway tomorrow the network engineer is going to do a reboot of the router and bring down a fiber link.

Thanks in advance for the advice and by the way i am no networking guru as well.

Paladin37,

Can you help me clear some points I am not sure about?

You mention a flat network between the 1st and 2nd floor and then refer to a router you have somethere in there and I'm wondering if the router "routes" packets between the two floors or networks ;

Are you able to sort of describe the network setup again so I can get a good view on the situation?

A few points to note:

1) Where is the server located physically and what logical network does it reside on

2) The clients on the 1st and 2nd floor, are they part of the same logical and physical network? How does the router come into the picture?

3) Are you using Active Directory or simply workgroups in your network?

4) Can you provide us with a complete view of your floors, with each logical network that exists on these floors?

5) Are you using shortcuts or drive mappings from the clients to the server in subject?

6) How are the floors connected between each other and at what speeds?

If you can add any other information that you think might help, please do so.

Sorry for all the above information, i dont know if its because its 4:30am here in Greece, or I'm simply tooo tired that I can't get a clear picture of your network and problem!

Cheers mate,