Speeding up and improving directory listing from windows Servers?

When I connect to windows servers (called PC-servers in OS X) getting the list of files in a directory is really slow (20-30s) in comparison to using a windows machine (<1s). Sometimes the files in a directory even disappear for a while! The network is not slow - copying files goes at 1Mbyte/s.

What can I do to improve this?

If you are using the Finder then try with another file manager or try run a ls in the terminal. Let us know if you are experiencing the same kind of delays using the command line.

Some good alternative file manager are muCommander and Midnight Commander. Try both.

I was able to speed up the directory listing by mounting shares via the command line, like this:

mount -t smbfs //user@server/sharename share

Where share is a directory in my home directory.

Somehow this is faster than mounting in the finder. Or is it ADmitMac slowing stuff down?