So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

JS2010 — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:37:58 GMT

Thanks for the informative blog. I have found that Superfetch/Readyboot could be your best friend, or your worst enemy. Disable it and it takes 45 seconds to login. Turn it on and it takes 2 minutes to login. But after 6 logins/reboots the login goes down to 20 seconds. But how do you automate that? Plus, in education you usually have the environment of Deepfreeze and Pgina, where every login is a 'new user', and on logout the machine is rebooted and the whole computer configuration is reset.

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

geemail — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:49 GMT

Thanks Bob....i understand your point, but the only gotcha was that I did not have any additional applications or policies enabled for user or computer account. Literally an XP workstation joined to the domain and logging in with a home folder enabled. That was why I was so confused...I would not have expected such a delay.

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

bobdrake — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:31:34 GMT

Hey Moe,

I was out of town but now Im back....your correct. If you are using home folders there is a chance that you are experiencing searches to those directories by the applications.

To be sure, check those network traces for DLL's being searched on the home folder path.

Bob Drake

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

geemail — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:44:21 GMT

Bob,

Thank you for the reply.

In my testing environment, I do not have roaming profiles enabled. We do however have some production scenarios in which we do have home folders with romaing profiles and this information will be beneficial for those cases.

Am I understanding your point correctly or can enabling a home folder for a user account without a roaming profile also fall subject to the above mentioned behavior?

Thanks,

Moe

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

bobdrake — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:51:23 GMT

Hey Geemail....

If you were to bust open that network trace and dig a little deeper do you see "DLL's" being referenced accross the network? If so, then the section from part 1 will apply:

" If home folders are needed with roaming profiles there is a registry key tweak (SafeDllSearchMode) that can be added that will change the behavior. If you’re not sure that this is an issue in your environment, take a network trace at logon and see if DLL’s are being queried across the network to the home folder. There is also another tweak on the same page (StartRunNoHOMEPATH) that will assist with applications doing this behavior."

Hope that helps..

Bob Drake

re: So you have a slow logon…? (Part 2)

geemail — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:33:29 GMT

Bob,

First off, thank you for this excellent outline in your Part 1 and 2 articles.

I have been assigned to troubleshoot slow logon in our domain, mostly with our laptop users but I am first attempting to take it to the next level and insure we are approaching the issue from a baseline standpoint.

95% of our workstation OS client base is XP SP3 and while we do deploy using imaging, I am currently at a point of testing with a fresh manually built XP SP3 installation, no user or computer group policy, no computer or user group memberships, no logon scripts, no drive encryption software, and no additional applications loaded in the OS.

Currently, I am at the point where I am attempting to determine why enabling a Home Folder for a user account increases the logon time by 30 seconds. If I remove the Home Folder mapping in AD, the logon process completes anywherer from 2 to 5 seconds. Once I enable the Home Folder for the user account I am testing with, the logon to a usable desktop takes approx. 30-35 seconds. I have tried NetMon from another workstation, ProcMon boot logging, and all the windows debug logging but I have yet to determine exactly why the additional 30 second delay occurs. I havent been able to find any documentation outlining why the delay occurs.

Once I can determine whether or not this is "normal" I can continue with trying to determine our baseline by enabling our standard group policies, drive encryption software, standard group memberships and our standard enterprise applications.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide. I have attempted to post this question in several other forums but I don't ever geta a solid response. I have been working on this too long to give up now but I am nearing the breaking point.

Thank you,

Moe