FM5 locks up in Open dialog box with Novell Server

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We publish church directories with FileMaker - we just upgraded 100+ seats to FM5 from FM4.1. Most are on Win98 and we have three NT FM Servers.

But our publishing dept uses Mac's and has small files - in single user mode - stored with image files on a Novell 5.1 server. These files are used to drive Xdata and are currently in 4.1 format.

With FM5.0v3 on the Mac with Novell client v5.13 from ProSoft, when we try to navigate the directory structure to find a file, the Mac frequently locks up. This will happen before we even locate the file.

We are running G3's and found some relief by installing Farallon network cards instead of using the onboard network connector. Using the G3's connector we would lockup at least every other time we tried to open a file and with the Farallon card it happens only 4 - 5 times a day. Some of our G3's lockup more frequently than others, but they all exhibit this behavior.

There are hundreds of these small files on the Novell server and each one is in a different directory, stored with it's images.

Anyone have any ideas?