Slow Excel & a Defragmened Server HardDisk

Server 2003
Xeon 3.4GHz Processor
4Gb RAM
203Gb Reported Hard Drive size, 64Gb Free

Drive seems to be constantly fragmented and windows will defragment only a tiny portion at a time.

Users (21 local and 9 remote(remote users log into domain and also connect via terminal services to run some apps))

Local users have started having issues when it comes to opening and closing Excel files. Excel itself opens pretty quickly but the files take minutes to open and frequently crash on saving. Excel files are stored in a shared directory on the server.

Whats the best way to work out where the problem lies?

I am defragging the hard disk again as I type but if someone can r7ecommend a better software for defraggiung server hard disks then I'm all ears.

But how do I identify if the problem is with the local machine, the amount of network traffic or getting the data off the server?

 

You might want to try the performance monitor in 2k3. Start-> run -> perfmon.msc is a quick way to get to it.

Add monitors for CPU usage, Disk IO queues and Network utilisation.

By the sounds of it it's mainly I/O wait that's causing the issues, if the io queues are high then that will confirm this. As for a remedy, well, I'm not sure.

Here's a link about using the performance monitor
http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2178431