From Julio: I recently installed a new server running Windows 2008 R2 (as a DC) and the related computers running Windows 7 Pro. The computers are joined to the domain. In a computer, which is shared by two users (userA and UserB), I see the following event on the Event Viewer while userA was logged...

Over the years, the following three causes for slow logons have been mistakenly identified as being relevant for improving logon speed on Windows clients. Deleting your cached roaming profile. This will most likely do nothing or even make your logon slower if the profile is excessively big and...

Available Updates for Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) in Windows Server 2008 R2 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2601888 Latest BaseCSP.DLL (as of April 2012): You may wait for up to 30 seconds when you use a smart card to unlock a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server...

A hotfix has recently been issued that resolves an issue where the Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 client "forgets" its dynamic site name during the startup sequence. The net effect of this being that the client always makes additional generic DNS queries which return non-site specific DC names back to...

A co-worker of mine had a case with the following description: We've set the CachedLogonsCount registry value to 1 on our workstations because we want to limit the number of cached user logons in the LSA cache on the system. However, this seems to have the side-effect of sometimes making it impossible...

There's tons of good stuff out there on Kerberos PAC verification - but with current trends showing an increase in incoming cases related to this type of issue I though it would do me good to brush up on this and link the most relevant articles together. In short; PAC verification is the process where...

There are two registry settings on Windows XP clients that have been observed to be key catalysts for slow boot/slow logon scenarios (also referred to as SBSL). On the Windows XP side (SP3 must be present on all clients): Turn on opportunistic locking on the XP clients: - Review http:...

GINA is dead.... the main reason is the fact that having more than one GINA on a system was difficult. Yes, chaining multiple GINA DLL's was a possibility but it really required at least one of the GINA providers to be aware of the other and trying to chain 3 different GINAs was still cumbersome. ...

Summer is here and support volumes trickle down to a minimum as people jump into their SUV's and drive off into the wild blue yonder. Having said that I encountered the following interesting issue: We installed the fix from KB 981332 on a Windows 2008 R2 server and after that we're not able to...

Note: this entry is about the Group Policy Preferences component and one aspect of it (which is resolved in later hotfixes or service packs) - for a more generic entry that describes troubleshooting slow logons in general see http://blogs.technet.com/b/instan/archive/2008/04/17/troubleshooting-the-intermittent...

I‘ve been thinking for some time about pulling together the typical approaches we use when troubleshooting account lockout issues. So... here is the CSS/PSS approach to troubleshooting Account Lockouts. #1 - Look at the Account Lockout Threshold policy that is defined for the Domain. Applications...

These are very generic client events and are logged whenever the system fails to apply Group Policy settings for either the user or the computer. One thing to note concerning a Userenv 1030/1058 event is that it doesn’t have to be indicative of a problem , it can be caused by environmental issues...

While bouncing around ideas with colleagues more intelligent than me I was reminded of a case I had with a customer 5 years ago. The exact specifics of the problem aren’t important but the reason it became a problem are as follows: If a DC receives a Name2Sid query about an account that isn’t...

The problem of port exhaustion usually doesn’t affect DC’s to the same extent as it affects clients and application servers. The reason is that a Domain Controller is the lord of its own small kingdom, it will usually have a local copy (RW or RO) of the partitions it needs to consult for servicing...

If you make unlimited storage space available to users, your users will use unlimited storage space...and then come back and ask for more storage space to be made available. - Avoid giving out unlimited disk space or mailbox space to your users, computer systems in general are a limited resource. It...

Credential Roaming is the replacement or alternative to using Roaming Profiles (or RUP - Roaming User Profiles). The biggest drawback to using RUP has always been that the profile tends to grow bigger as time goes by ( raise your hand if you've ever saved a file on your desktop ). One of the primary...

This entry is written concerning the following issue; How applications and services can add to the startup or login time of clients. The basics first; On any operating system, performing any operation takes time. This is just a fact of life and is more related to the nature of time than a question...

Netlogon is a client and a server component; when it logs 5719 it is acting as a client and trying to make a network connection that fails for some reason. A Netlogon 5719 event indicates that the client component of Netlogon was unable to locate a DC for the domain it was trying to perform an operation...

Winlogon is the main component that logs data to the Userenv.log file (through userenv.dll). If Userenv debug logging is enabled as per KB 221833, the userenv.log file will include the following: - Slow link detection - Machine Group Policy Application - Processes and applications which start...

Update: See also the following articles for up-to-date information on how to fix slow logon issues in Windows systems: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10130.root-causes-for-slow-boots-and-logons.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10128.tools...

Some time ago I had an interesting escalation where the problem description was as following: I'm running a Citrix Metraframe Presentation Server farm with around 20 servers in it, after about 2 days my users start getting a logon delay of *exactly* 2 minutes. If I reboot the server everything...