Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Jason — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:58:05 GMT

Small Typo; Should read:

You could also use the MSCONFIG.EXE utility to temporarily prevent non-Microsoft services from starting up the next time the system boots. To do this, launch the System Configuration Utility, and on the Services tab, check "hide all Microsoft Services", and then select “Disable All”. When you reboot the system, if the problem does not recur, then you now have a much smaller list of potential culprits to troubleshoot.

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

CC Hameed — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:23:03 GMT

Thanks Jason! I corrected it.

- CC

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Seth — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:06:19 GMT

I had this happen quite a bit a couple years ago. Users were getting extremely frustrated. I FINALLY discovered that certain PCs weren't getting their DHCP IP addresses fast enough, so it would would just hang for 20-45 minutes (no lie) "Applying Computer Settings". Of course, GPOs were never applied either. Events were logged regarding not being able to get an IP from DHCP, so I eventually figured out what the problem was, but nothing online how to fix it.

In MY situation, the fix ended up being to enable "Portfast" on our Cisco switches for all affected ports. The network ports became active much faster, so during DORA the NIC was up and ready.

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

CC Hameed — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:02:14 GMT

Seth -

Glad to hear that you were able to identify the issue and resolve it. I wasn't aware of the "Portfast" issue myself, but it's good that the Event Log messages helped to point you in the right direction!

Thank you for sharing your experience - I'm sure that some of our other readers will be able to benefit from it.

- CC

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

TimWalsh — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:37:00 GMT

Portfast is used on a Cisco switch to essentially disable Spanning Tree when the interface starts up. Without it, the interface is disabled for 50 seconds, assuming the default settings while the switch verifies it doesn't have a loop. Not sure how that 50 seconds delay translates into a 20 to 45 minute delay on startup, but apparently it did in this case.

Gotta be associated with the Nic starting while the interface was still down, causing Windows to hang while it waited for things to timeout, but sure seems excessive. Windows does like to chat, and lot of things like to phone home when the machines start up, so a nic being down could cause a lot of things to be hanging.

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

DivineInterv — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:45:13 GMT

I m using Svr 2008 as a Vista Replacement & for learning processes

My sys takes about 50sec frm d win boot screen to desktop (autologin)

mostly wasting time at "Applying Computer Setings"

I tried ur suggestion of physically removing d cable &

voila! it takes 10 sec for d same thing

Plz can u point me out in right direction to proceed frm here

t/y

-DivInt

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

CC Hameed — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:01:44 GMT

DivInt -

There's two ways to approach this, but they focus on slightly different causes.

The first is to run MSCONFIG and temporarily disable the non-Microsoft services from starting. If the problem is a service making network request, then you should see an improvement following the reboot. At that point, you'll need to do a bit of elimination work to determine which service is causing the issue.

The second method would be to enable USERENV logging and review the output to see if there is a GPO that is responsible for the delay - perhaps some sort of startup script, for example.

In addition, check the Event Logs for clues - Seth pointed out in an earlier comment that enabling PortFast resolved his issue. The teltale sign was the fact that systems weren't able to get an IP Address from DHCP.

If you're unable to pinpoint the cause, I'd definitely recommend opening up a support incident with us so we can assist you.

Hope this helps - and please let us know if you resolved the issue and what it was!

- CC

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Dakk — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:04:02 GMT

Hello, I'm trying to pinpoint some 'Applying Computer Settings' slowness but I think I'm stuck. I've gathered machines from all across the network, and as you can see they all have a signifcant delay before 'InitializePolicyProcessing'. What goes on before this? Any idea on how to find out, packet sniffers aren't showing much, and I'm 99% sure DNS is correct. Thanks

USERENV(16b0.16b4) 08:25:42:210 LibMain: Process Name: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe

USERENV(4d4.4d8) 08:26:30:375 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(514.e8c) 13:23:33:300 MIDL_user_free enter

USERENV(518.51c) 13:25:10:885 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(1528.10e8) 07:51:28:102 LibMain: Process Name: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe

USERENV(4fc.500) 07:52:17:421 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(3d4.910) 08:22:22:181 MIDL_user_free enter

USERENV(3d4.3d8) 08:23:09:468 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(5d4.a0c) 08:21:51:790 UnloadUserProfile: returning 1

USERENV(5ac.5b0) 08:23:09:122 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(1c0.d08) 18:54:18:157 LibMain: Process Name: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe

USERENV(53c.540) 18:54:48:671 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

USERENV(1080.10e0) 18:42:08:562 LibMain: Process Name: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe

USERENV(53c.540) 18:42:36:437 InitializePolicyProcessing: Initialised Machine Mutex/Events

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Kriz — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:26:42 GMT

MMM, i'm a bit stuck here with this issue too.

We've had over 200 XP machines deployed in Germany where the German team had taken the default image, installed the German MUI on top of it and re sysprepped ti. No sweat.. wouldn't it be that they've applied 'German' to all Default users (Regional and Language options-> Advanced-> 'Default User account settings"

As a result, the domain workstartion startup scripts no longer function correctly. Some of them use the "Time/T" in a bat file and the English D for Day becomes T for Tag !!!

cut the long story short, the build in System account S-1-5-18 is set to German and i tried to set it to English with a registry fix.

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Control Panel\Desktop]

"MultiUILanguageId"="00000409"

"MUILanguagePending"="00000409"

That worked... but the machine takes 9 minutes now to get to the Control ALT Del instead of 1 min.

EventDebug shows 50 sec delays on some steps

There's clearly more involved than just this registry to set the language back correctly but i've not seen a tool that allows us to do it automatically, i 'm no fan of visiting all these machines again one by one

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Ben — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:11:44 GMT

I'm having some similar issue and mine appears to be with reading the policy and it almost appears to be to many machines reading the policy at once or some machine is locking the policy. If I unplug the NIC on the machine that is freezing up, it will immediatly come up.

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Stephen Kirby — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:03:14 GMT

I found the fix is to Change the computer name and change it to Workgroup restart the PC then go to Change Computer name and then re-join the domain.

This fixes the problem

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

Mark — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:18:29 GMT

My fix was to remove the external USB hard drive. I believe it is corrupted or has hardware problems that prevented the computer from performing as it should have.

I removed it from server and plugged it into a Vista Ultimate laptop and had similar trouble.

re: Help! I’m stuck at “Applying Computer Settings” …

lynn — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:34:09 GMT

I must have changed my computer settings...for the worst

I get a email.....the email opens find...can read it...but the document sent in the attachemnt ..opens in my notebook and is scrambled....please help