Lunchtime WWW surfers perhaps?

- Steve

If the IT department has automatic backup on the network where individual clients have their new files "backed up" to servers, then maybe the date/time of the servers has been switched from am to pm?  If they did that, there could be quite a bit of additional traffic on the network and could be the issue at hand.  Usually, 1am to 4am is "prime time" for backups.  Some of the machines that I have been aware of do an automatic wakeup during that time.  My son got an old computer from work when they upgraded his machine.  It scared him quite a bit to have the machine power up in the middle of the night!

A network "sniffer" would certianly help finger the offending source of the slowdown.

One that I have used for years on linux/unix boxes is

http://www.ethereal.com/

I think that they have a version for windows. This is all free software.

  Cheers,

   Rich S.

Oh, 1 & 2 as in the night time?  Most of our serious crontabs run about that sort of time, doing backups and other off-line stuff.

- Steve

Thanks richs.  I downloaded a sniffer.  I meant 1:00 - 2:00 in the afternoon.  By the way, I read that the Windows shadow copy can cause this problem.

Another possibility is anti-virus scans

Basically it sounds like some process is running at that time, possibly initiated remotely.

Its just a matter of identifying what that process is.

Windows task manager, simple as it is, might help

Could just be someone targeting your network with a DoS, Smurf, or FINSCAN.

TTFN

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