Intermittent start menu redirection issue

[IT_Man_Dan]

Evening all,

We have WIn 7 clients and a 2008 R2 server.

We have GPO's setup to redirect the users start menu to one we have setup under a shared folder on the server.
98% of the time it works perfectly but then completely randomly a user will log ina and get the default start menu, yet other GPO's have worked.

Has anyone got any thoughts as to what could be causing this?
Is there anything I can put in the login script to ensure the redirect works all the time, as a fail safe.

Many thanks
Dan

[kirchie]

Could be a dodgy profile? I've found that sometimes just deleting it and getting them to log in again fixes the problem.

[IT_Man_Dan]

I'm still getting this issue, One day a user logs ina nd gets the correct desktop and start menu from the server (set in GPO), then the next day it gives them the standard local start menu?

Has anyone got any ideas what could cause this? I don't think it's a profile issue.

[hermand]

Checking RSOP should be your first port of call with an issue like this. Are you redirecting start menus to a networked location, or are the files local?

[kirchie]

Could be a lost trust relationship between AD and the client computer too? Depends if this is affecting a few computers here and there or a classroom.

[AJWhite1970]

When I first rolled-out Windows 7 I was in the same situation, 98% of workstations would redirect to the network start menu perfectly, randomly a few wouldn't (never the same PC twice) and would just have the normal m$ start menu. Eventually I gave up and redirected the start menu to c:\start menu and run a batch file as part of the user login script to run a job with fastcopy to compare and copy the network share with the copy of C:\start menu (so users always get the latest menu plus staff logging in on student PC's get the right start menu etc.)

Solved all our problems and never saw an incorrect start menu again. Never tracked down why, could have been server performance, GPO not working, I tried redirecting via GPO's and registry keys to no avail.

Not helpful as a fix for you unfortunately, just to say you weren't alone...
Andrew

[chazzy2501]

are you redirecting to the server share or are you using mapped drive? Mapped drives shoudn't be used.

[IT_Man_Dan]

The redirection is set directly back to PDC (eg. \\servername\redirection$\staff) for start menu and wallpaper.

It's almost as if the GPO's aren't processing or something similar.
I've just been looking at the GPO and realised under computer config>Administrative Template>System>Logon 'Always wait for network' is NOT configured. Would this help or would it just slow down logon?

Thanks for your advice.

[ricki]

HI

Have you checked the event log of the servers running windows 2008 r2. This version of windows starts to move processing power to the nic card and a lot of the time the cards cannot cope with this and just stop talking to the network for short periods. They leave records in the event viewer.

We had to disable chimney, rss , autotunneling and checksum and the problem disappeared.

HP Communities - Disabling TCP Chimney Offload, RSS and NetDMA in W... - Enterprise Business Community

Also try a network capture on all your servers using Wireshark and save it in the correct form and open it with capsa and look at the diagnostics to see if it find anything.

Richard

Richard

[ricki]

Sorry I forget

Try and dcdiag and a netdiag on the servers, and check that they are replicating if you have more than one domain controller.

Richard

[ricki]

Idea

Are the nic cards in the machines 1 gig?

Richard

[IT_Man_Dan]

Thanks for your replys. Yes the nic cards are 1 gig.

Regards
Dan

[MrWu]

One thing that drove us completey bonkers!

We tried:

Turning TCP/IP offload to disable on the NIC
Diasbling allow PC to turn off network card
Forcing NIC to run at 100mbps

What made a big difference in the end was we turned off Spanning Tree (even RSTP) on the Netgear switch for now, it still happens (you always see a DHCP/DNS error on the event viewer on the PCs in question) but very rarely now; in combination of all the tweaks above, of course, this leads to risk of loop backs though.

Also, do you use local or roaming profiles? I have know corrupted local profiles to case this random issue too.