Accessing a Mounted File System is Slow or Fails After a Few Seconds

Learn how to troubleshoot delayed UNC access or Error 53 on a file system mounted using Windows NFS.

Symptom 1: Accessing a mounted file system with File Explorer or Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path or Command Prompt/Powershell is significantly delayed or fails. The effect is intermittent.

Symptom 2 : Mount fails using Windows NFS connection with "Network Error 53 "Network path not found".

Cause: By default, Windows network providers have higher priority than the client for NFS network provider. Initially, the delay as Windows tries each provider in the default order is significant. Subsequent attempts may be faster because the mount information is cached. After the cache times out, the delay increases again. The native Windows file system client called Distributed File System (DFS) is also given default priority over NFS client, increasing the delay.

Solution: Change the network provider order and disable the DFS client so that the client for NFS Network provider is tried first.

For reference, see:

• Support for UNC Naming and MUP
• Modify the protocol bindings and network provider order
• MUP and DFS Interactions