At our local food pantry we are running Access-Based software on a Windows XP desktop server. Volunteers who are dealing directly with Clients work on two Windows XP laptop computers that are wirelessly connected to the desktop computer via a wireless G network. Thus, the laptop computers are essentially acting as two smart terminals, both of which are accessing the software that resides on the faster desktop server.
This arrangement can be very, very slow, and I would like to speed it up in some way. It is common for characters (ex, a client’s first name) in a particular field of a form to only appear slowly as you type. For example, for a short name like “sam”, you might get the name completely typed before the initial “s” ever shows up on the laptop computer screen. When the first name does show up and you Tab to the "last name" field, you might not see the cursor show up in the "last name" field for several seconds. Typically, you see the blue bar at the top of the Access form screen turn from light to dark blue at the same time as you see your cursor show up in that last name field. All of this sounds a bit like the timing is being dictated by how long it takes Access to get back to that particular laptop computer. Indeed, if the software is run directly on the desktop computer server, one never sees this slowness. If it is being run from either of the two laptops, but only one laptop is actually running the software on the server, then you again DO NOT see this slowness. As soon as a second laptop computer begins running running from the server, then you see this slowness in a dramatic way.
I have also learned that at no time is the server being significantly taxed. Looking at Windows Performance Diagnostics on the server I can see that at no time is the amount of available CPU power or the amount of memory (4 Gb) being greatly consumed.
Does anyone have any suggestions about Access parameters that I might adjust to speed things up?
Thanks,
Ron