Windows 2008 File Share with xp sp3 clients

Due to a unrecoverable hardware failure on one of our w2k3 DC's-hostname-Matthew(not the operations master) which also was the FileShare(G: drive user home folders) server, I used RoboCopy(with parms to include the security) to copy the file share folders to a new server running w2k8 (standard edition)-hostname-Thomas. Changed the login scripts to point to Thomas.

The resulting new issue is that it takes several minutes to populate the WinXP desktop icons. The bootup and domain login process goes quickly. During the 7-10 minutes of waiting the desktop screen is blue with no icons. When the desktop icons do finally load, on My Computer the mapped drives (on Thomas) defined in the login script are missing. On the same single segment network Windows7 machines display the deskop and mapped drives quickly. A reboot of Thomas(w2k8) solves the slow startup process for 24 hours sometimes. Sometimes a couple days, other times maybe 12 yours before needing to reboot.

I have since built a new w2k8r2 server as the new DC with the operations masters. Demoted the old w2k3 DC and removed DNS from it. DNS seems to be working ok, as the Win7 desktops have no issues. Using local profiles on the clients.

Have a couple basic/simple Group Policies that worked fine before restoring the home folders from the old w2k3 server Matthew to the new w2k8 server Thomas.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Doug Cutter
Network Administrator
St. Mary's School
Bellevue, NE

From how I read it, your domain was replaced and the primary issue is the load times for users on XP machines now. If this is the case, I would be surprised to see a newly imaged XP machine freshly joined to the domain have long load times (besides the initial local profile creation). If this solves the issue, you then know it's the issue of the local machine and not your DC. Best of luck to you, I think we've all been in a mysterious situation like yours before.