Cannot open older Office Docs from Windows Server 2012 shares?

I am at my wits end on this one.

Up until last week our main file server was in remote server closet on a Windows Server 2008 VM.

The server crashed and we restored the data onto a Windows Server 2012r2 VM in in a real datacenter (still remote to my location).

Everything seemed fine except the users started complaining about being unable to open certain files.

Digging into it fairly deeply, here’s what I've been able to deduce…

The problem occurs only in 1 of our 20 locations (my location), on older Office format documents (.xls, .doc, .ppt), that are larger than 500K in size.

• Other locations are not having this issue.
• If the file is less than 500K then the problem doesn't occur.
• If the file is one of the newer format (.xlsx, .docx, .pptx) then the problem doesn't occur.
• If the file is in a different format (.pdf, .txt, etc), no matter the size, then the problem doesn't occur.

I have tried on multiple machines, including a bare bones machine with no AV, not joined to the domain, and still get the same results in my location.

What happens when you try to open the file is a bit strange.

1. The application will open, the file will start to download
2. About 2 -3 seconds into the download it will stop (bandwidth usage goes to minimal)
3. About 10 – 15 seconds later the application will try to restart the download but the server doesn't send anything (no blip on bandwidth usage)
4. It will do this cycle about 3 times in total and then error out
5. If you try to cancel while it is cycling, your connection to the share will be cut for about 30 seconds until everything times out

If I open the same file from a machine in one of my other locations, the file opens fine.

Using the remote computer I can then save it as an xlsx file (or docx, or pptx) on the same share, in the same directory.

I go to open the new format file and it works like it is supposed to.

I've tried disabling the SMB2 protocol on both the server and client…didn’t help.

I tried disabling SMB1 protocol on the server and client…didn’t help.

I've tried a mixture of the two with no positive results.

Any ideas on this one?