Delay when applying personal settings on 2000/Xp machines 1

[FlavesEnt]

Currently we have a mixed Windows network. Our clients are 98, 2000 and XP. All our servers are 2000 with 1 2003 server.

Whenever an XP or 2000 machine logs on to the network, we experience a delay of approx. 5 mins before the computer actually logs on. Microsoft has an article on knowledge base that recommends deleting all the user profiles that exist on the machine, which may increase log on time. This does not work.

We have AD running only 1 Group Policy.

We have 2 global catalog servers at this location and 4 DCs.

We have scanned both clients and servers for viruses, and found none.

Any suggestions to what is causing the delay and a way to fix it would be great.

Thanks.

 

[vbrocks]

Try to use network monitor and see what is going on ...
Also you can enable auditing and check the event logs. ....
You can check to see if your infrastructure master is a GC server, if it is you must transfer the role to another dc.

 

[trusted]

Try creating a test user account that does not have a Roaming or Manditory porfile, instead it should just be a local profile. See if it still takes along time to log on. If it does do what vbrocks suggests and run network monitor on a DC. Capture and analize the packets. See if there is a large amount on traffic being generated from one source. Maybe a NIC is on its way out and is broadcasting like there no tomorrow.

What type of infrastructure are you running? The reason I ask is that I just had a client that had slow log on times and they were using manditory profiles that were not all that large. What it turned out to be was the way they had there topology setup.

One 48 port switch uplinked to another using 100 Mbps which in turn was uplinked to another 48 port which then ran into their server room to a 24 port switch. It turned out that the cooling fan on the 24 port switch was toast and the switch was running hot. I installed a new fan and the log on times dropped to an reasonable level considering the daisy chaining of the switches.

 

[FlavesEnt]

Ok, here is an update. When we reghosted a hard drive, with the original disk image, the log on time was 4 seconds. I think the network mappings could be an issue with that, I'll look into it on Monday.

Since the same machine did not have any delays after the disk re-image, in my mind that narrows down any network hardware problem such as a switch. We have been testing this in a lab of 25 machines, which the other machines in the lab still had an issue.

There was no traffic on the network this past week, because our school was closed for spring break. That combined with the successful quick log on of the reghosted drive elminates a broadcast storm in my mind.

Additionally, our 98 machines are not having a delay.

What would be causing the drive mappings to freeze up? All our servers that have mapped drives are currently working fine, and in fact were rebooted during our break, after the problem was reported.

I appreciate your help guys. Thanks.

 

[vbrocks]

Since you are using 98 machines I assume you have WINS enabled. There is a possibility that the Wins database got corrupted. You can always try deleting it and see what happens. It will recover fairly quickly.

 

[vbrocks]

Another thing to check is to run the diagnostics for DNS....

 

[trusted]

Are these the boxes that are being used in the computer labs that are having the issues? Does everyone have a seperate logon account? If they do it could be the locally cached copies of the roaming profiles that are causing it. Try deleting the cached profile from one of the machines and then reboot it. See if it speeds up the logon.

Another thing to check is the current size of the registry compared the maximum registry size that is set. If it is close to the maximum limit try increasing the size. For some reason, in 2000 at least, the more users that log on to a single box tends to bloat the registry which can cause the system to hang during logons.

If this is happening try creating a GPO that deletes the cached copy of the roaming profile. It's located under Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>System.

 

[FlavesEnt]

Trusted,

We tried the first part of what you suggested. We deleted the locally cached copies, but logon time was still long.

However, when we completely reimaged the disk, log on was fine. I think your theory of the max registr size makes sense. How can I increase that?

Thanks a lot for your help. I will score big points with my boss if I figure out the problem before he does (with your help of course.) ;-)

Talk to you.

Dan

 

[trusted]

Right click My Computer from the menu choose properties. This brings up the System Properties window. Select the Advanced tab, then Performance. On the Performance options window in the virtual memory section you need to choose the Change button. At the bottom of that window you will see the area for changing your registry size.

 

[DWax]

Had same problem in the past. Make sure workstations have the domain server's IP as it's primary DNS.

 

[FlavesEnt]

Turns out it was a problem with our Operations Master. We had to do some minor reconfiguring (stop and start a couple services, then run nltest) but things are working fine now. Thanks.