First the set up

1 vmware of xp sp2 with MS Office 2003.

When a doc or speadsheet is opened and then saved directly to a usb flash drive the host virtual machine locks up.  I have to go in and use VMWare tools to re set the xp machine.  If they save to the VHD and then copy and paste to the usb.  It works fine.  I have tested Open Office and it seems to be ok. 

It does not happen on non virtual machines.  Any idea's on where to start?  Is this a MS Office issue, a virtual machine issue. a network issue (due to latency delays writing to the usb drive.)  The event viewer system error logs says that usb device stopped reponding.  Happens on both L200 and L230's.  The further away the user is from the host the more the problem.

Needing Idea's to solve the problem..

thanks in advance.

I don't have any small ones, but I could re partition one to 64k and see if that helps.  I had forgotten about the MS temp file for Office.  I will check that also.  They don't seem to have an issue when it is just data transfer, but when the programs accesses it remotely. 

thanks for the ideas

John

What network speed are you running, I've found that unless I have the Host machine utilising a 1000/mb (GB) port i encounter similar issues due to the latency of the USB data being sent/received across the LAN. I couldnt even get a 128MB usb to work when I was running at 100MB, now with the 1000MB enabled I have no issues using a 2GB usb key.

Hope this helps

I was suspecting that is was a usb latency issue.  I noticed the users futher away from the host have the most problems. Thanks for the suggestion.  I will give it a try also.