I have Windows 7 x64 Home Premium and McAfee Internet Security incl. the firewall. I have been suffering from
major connection problems with my two QNAP NAS servers. At random times, Windows Explorer would just
hang and only a reboot would help.
I tried:
- Temporarily disabling the firewall.
- Open ports 137-139 + 445.
- Remove any shell extensions (a well known reason for Windows Explorer crashes)
I modified the authentication settings for SAMBA connections due to the default usage of NTLM v2 by Windows 7.
As I mentioned, I can connect to the NAS, but after a while (random, varies between a few minutes to few
hours) Windows Explorer crashes/hangs and is not responding anymore.
Competitors' products like Kaspersky or ZoneAlarm shows the same behaviour.
Current solution is to use the Windows 7 firewall, which works perfectly.
EDIT: the Windows 7 firewall ONLY works if the autodisconnect setting in the registry is set to 0xFFFF (maximum value).
If you leave it to the default value of 0xF (15) with the Windows 7 firewall, Explorer also crashes. The McAfee firewall
crashes ALWAYS, regardless of the autodisconnect setting.