my google fu and CIFS don't work together

I'm in the process of vetting Windows 7 performance against a Samba server. The server is an old piece of hardware running a proprietary OS, which the Samba code was ported to. In some cases (in particular, asking for a directory listing in a directory with a large number of files), the server takes a long time to respond. After a certain period of time with no response, Windows 7 will drop the CIFS session, re-establish a new session, and re-issue the request, causing two of these requests to be running simultaneously, bringing the server to its knees. XP will drop the CIFS session, but it doesn't re-establish a second session and ask again.

I've been googling and googling, but haven't been able to find any way to either a) make Windows 7 wait longer before deciding the server isn't going to respond, or b) give up without trying again. Is this possible?

Any suggestions other than getting rid of the legacy hardware (it's not something that we can virtualize) would be appreciated.

Heh.. the other suggestion is to run Linux on that ancient hardware. Possible?

Theoretically yes, since it's based on an ARM chip, but not without more work and expense than we're willing to incur -- the server is a component in a legacy product containing a significant amount of custom hardware. The successor, however, is running Linux on mostly off-the-shelf hardware.

That sounds just like an Omneon.