Why did the delay happen when I ran a movie from my NAS?

My DS923+ is connected to the network port of my laptop and it's a 1000mbps connection so I copy files to\from the NAS at a speed of 100 mb/s. I have mapped my shared folder of the NAS to z: on my laptop. I am using Windows 11 on the laptop. I bought my laptop on May 2025.

Initially there is green on z: in This PC and it put the NAS capacity under z:. If I close the laptop lid so it sleeps and I open it to wake it up then there is a red x on z: and it says the NAS capacity under z:. If I access z: and I go back to This PC then the red x changes to a green. I guess that's normal behavior.

I have movies on z: and I am playing them in MPC-HC from the laptop. Normally when I do that then MPC-HC instantly opens and then it takes a few seconds for the movie to start.

Yesterday I didn't access z: all day and I didn't open This PC so I don't know if the red x stayed there all day or it got converted to green on its own. In the evening I pressed the Windows key and I clicked on a movie in the recent section of the start menu. MPC-HC didn't start instantly and it started after a 30 second delay.

Pressing the Windows key during the delay did nothing. I guess that each time I press the Windows key it accesses something in the NAS and the delay locked the access so pressing the Windows key did nothing.

I guess that 30 second delay was caused by an SMB issue because Windows misbehaved. Did the issue happen because I didn't access the NAS or open This PC all day so maybe the red x stayed on z: the whole time? This wasn't the first time that I ran a movie without opening This PC to convert the red x to green and my media player always started instantly.

The logical cause for the issue is that Windows completely dropped the SMB connection so a timeout happened when I ran the movie from the recent list and I had to wait for the timeout to finish and for the SMB connection to reestablish. That's weird because the issue never happened before.

Is there anything that I can do to prevent the issue from happening again? Before allow the PC to turn off the device to save power was ticked for the network card driver in the device manager. I unticked it. Now it's random and sometimes I get a red x on z: when I wake up the laptop and sometimes it's already green when I wake up the laptop. Before it wasn't random and I always got a red x on z: when I woke up the laptop.

If Windows really did drop the SMB connection then how do I always keep it alive? I did some research and i found out that i can run net config server /autodisconnect:-1 in elevated cmd. Will that help and it's safe? Is there a need to edit the SMB timeout in the registry settings?

Is this an MPC-HC bug? When I bought the laptop in May 2025 I was using a program called Awesome Photo Duplicate Finder to scan for duplicate pics in a folder in z: and that folder had a lot of pics. The scan speed started fast and it went through the pics fast and then the scan speed dropped and it went through the pics slowly. After that I tried to open a movie in the NAS by using MPC-HC and it started after a 30 second delay. I guess that the problem happened because the network connection was congested because I was scanning for duplicate photos.

I think Windows marks mapped drives as “disconnected” until something tries to access them.
The moment you click Z:, Windows re‑authenticates and the icon should turn green.
I believe the 30‑second delay is an inconsistant network timeout, not an MPC‑HC bug.

I’m reaching because I don’t know. It’s a slow day for me.

antspants said:

I believe the 30‑second delay is an inconsistant network timeout, not an MPC‑HC bug.

Click to expand...

I guess so. I am trying to figure out why it happened.

antspants said:

I’m reaching because I don’t know. It’s a slow day for me.

Click to expand...

Thanks for trying to help :)

You already disabled power saving. Some other things you may try?

• ensure the nas uses a static ip. mapped drives apparently reconnect faster when using \\192.168.x.x\share instead of hostname.
• disable disk spin‑down on the nas. if the nas wakes its disks, that adds delay.
• use a shortcut to the movie instead of start menu “recent”. the start menu is probably trying to resolve the path before launching mpc‑hc, which could be causing the freeze.
• use unc paths instead of mapped drives. apparently mpc‑hc handles unc paths more gracefully than mapped drives.

antspants said:

ensure the nas uses a static ip. mapped drives reconnect faster when using \\192.168.x.x\share instead of hostname.

Click to expand...

I connected the NAS to my laptop on May 2025 and I ran the Synology Assistant and I did network setup. In the beginning I used a static IP address but it said connect failed so I used DHCP and it worked. I got an APIPA IP address because I am using DHCP without an internet connection. The APIPA IP address is fixed and it's not changing. My NAS is called ds923plus and my shared folder is called MyData. I mapped z: to \\ds923plus\MyData.

antspants said:

disable disk spin‑down on the nasif the nas wakes its disks, that adds delay.

Click to expand...

NAS hibernate is off and the NAS is always on.

antspants said:

use a shortcut to the movie instead of start menu “recent”. the start menu tries to resolve the path before launching mpc‑hc, which causes the freeze.

Click to expand...

When I press the Windows key I get a list of the most recent programs that I am running on the laptop. MPC-HC is in the list and if I press the right arrow when MPC-HC is selected then I will get a list of all the movies that I opened in MPC-HC and then I click on the movie that I want so I can resume watching it.

antspants said:

use unc paths instead of mapped drives. apparently mpc‑hc handles unc paths more gracefully than mapped drives.

Click to expand...

I don't understand. My movies folder is called movies and I can access it either by saying z:\movies or \\ds923plus\MyData\movies. If I want to start watching a movie I can access my movie folder in both ways and I press enter on the movie. Assume that I watch half the movie and I want to continue it later. When I want to continue it later it's easier to do that from the recent MPC-HC movie list than to again find the movie in the movie folder and press enter on it again.

I was using a program called Awesome Photo Duplicate Finder in May 2025 to scan for duplicate pics in a folder in z: and that folder had a lot of pics. The scan speed started fast and it went through the pics fast and then the scan speed dropped and it went through the pics slowly. After that I tried to open a movie in the NAS by using MPC-HC and it started after a 30 second delay. I guess that the problem happened because the network connection was congested because I was scanning for duplicate photos.

After the incident happened I stopped doing duplicate photo scan on the NAS and I copied the photos folder to the laptop and I did the duplicate photo scan on my laptop. I am not doing anything on my NAS and I have no programs running on it. I am only using the NAS to store my movies, pics and games.

I used MPC-HC to watch movies on my NAS for a few months and then I switched to SM Player and I used it for nearly 1 year. I bought a new soundbar last week so I switched back to MPC-HC. I watched movies by using MPC-HC for 1 week and there were no issues and then suddenly I got a delay when I ran a movie from the recent list.

I have been resuming movies from the recent list of MPC-HC and SM Player many times between the incident on May 2025 and yesterday and nothing happened and then suddenly the delay happened when I wanted to resume a movie.

Well you know your stuff so I will step back, meaning you know more about this than I do.

I use PLEX Media Server. I can't go past it.
There was another I wanted to try because to use PLEX remotely, you need a paid account. But for the life of me, I have forgotten its name. It could be Jellyfin, I just haven't had the time.