performance trouble with large excel file

[gaetan]

Hello,
I am experiencing a performance problem while accessing a large EXCEL
file (?), 20 Mb, getting it from a samba particular share.

System & Os
==========
Serveur : PII 350 MB 64 Mb 10 Go Eth 100Mb
Client : PII 333 128 Mb 6,4Go Eth 100 Mb
server & client are alone on the same 100Mb switch

I am using a LINUX box as server, running Linux 2.0.36, samba 2.0.2
(The same problem occurs with LINUX 2.2.5 and samba  2.0.3)
I tried the client with Win95 ( Last release for winsock ), Win98, NT4
server .
(Same problem ...)

The file is stored as : /work/user1/level1/level2/bigfile.xls

Setting the  share(s):
================
[share1]
     path = "/work"
     ...

[share2]
     path =  "/work/user1/level1/level2"
     ...

Testing access time from Windows.
==========================
Using share1 as remote drive, it took about 7 minutes to load an be
ready to work with bigfile.xls
Using share2, it took only 17 secondes !.

I tried what I could with oplock, socket options, kernel oplock, ...  ->
nothing has changed.
I suspect a lock problem ( using fstat ? ),

Can anyone help me ?
(Sorry for my english).