Slow menus

[ozydave]

We have a 2003 domain with xp clients, roaming profiles for all.
The students have a redirected start menu so they only get what I want them to get.
The problem is that once a student logs in and clicks the start menu, it takes an age for the menu to pop up. It has been slow ever since I have started working here, just would like to get it sorted now.
I have moved the redirected menu form the domain controller, to another server which is TS and idle during the day, also moved it to another server as a final check. All had no improvement in the situation.

I have tried it after school when no one is around also

Any ideas would be great.
Cheers

[MK-2]

sometimes its one of the links in the start menu linking to a server that is off, and the start menu is trying to find that link, so say you had a link for word pointing to
\\server\word\word.exe, the start menu is sat there trying to find \\server but server is off or doesn't exist.
not sure if it is that, but maybe just look through all your links, check if they point to the right location

[krisd32]

i would agree with MK-2 sounds like a shortcut issue.

[srochford]

It will be particularly bad if the link points to a now-dead server but even for live servers this can really slow things down.

If you've never done it, put sysinternals filemon on the machine and run it and then click start - watch the amount of work done by explorer as it builds the menu.

if you can change the start menu links for anything which does need to be launched from a server so that the icon is picked up from a folder on the C: drive and the shortcut actually points to wscript launching a network based script then you remove a huge amount of network traffic and should see a big increase in speed of start menu appearing.

[mullet_man]

Check out this thread, think Ric_ mentions why they might be slow, http://www.edugeek.net/forums/networ...w-explain.html

I have this problem, but never got round to recreating all the shortcuts.

[rob_f]

If you've got a folder redirection on the start menu to a server, you'll always get some lag. As we weren't updating the start menu that often, there wasn't a need for it to be always checked on the server, so i wrote a script to do a sync of the menu on startup to local disk, then point the redirect at that.

I found it did increase the startup script time, but that was resolved by putting a pointer file on the server with a version number in it. When you change the start menu on the server, increase the version. The script would then compare the local copy of the pointer and if the number is less than the server one, do a sync.

Whilst doing these syncs you can also take the opportunity to use the script to do things like wallpapers - again faster to have them locally than refer to them on the server. I even made multiple resolution copies of the wallpapers and then had the script check the current screen res and download the relevant wallpaper to keep things looking nice

Some food for thought hopefully, unfortunately I can't post the script as it's intellectual property of my previous employer. Boo.

[maniac]

As we weren't updating the start menu that often, there wasn't a need for it to be always checked on the server, so i wrote a script to do a sync of the menu on startup to local disk, then point the redirect at that. . . . .

I had exactly the same setup at a previous school, it worked like a charm and also stopped the missing startmenu and desktop problems you can get on wireless laptops using a redirected startmenu when the wireless signal drops. My simple script deleted the existing local copy and re-copied the start menu from the server everytime the machine started up. As it's only a handful of shortcuts it really didn't take too long to do, and extra time taken at startup is out weighed by the benefits in my opinion.

This script also examines the OU the computer account is in, and copies over additional icons for each set of workstations if you want it to, as defined by the case statement. That means you no longer have dead links on your start menu for programs only installed in a certain area of the school. Hopefully the rest of it is fairly self explanatory.

on error resume next

Const OverWriteFiles = True
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objFSO.DeleteFolder("C:\settings\startmenu")
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\DOMAIN\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\Basicicons" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

Set objWshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set objAdsSystemInfo = CreateObject("adsysteminfo")
Set objComputerName = GetObject("LDAP://" & objAdsSystemInfo.ComputerName)
Set objOU = GetObject(objComputerName.Parent)
strOU = replace(objOU.Name,"OU=","")

Select Case strOU

 Case "room 1"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm1" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

 Case "Room 3"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm3" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

 Case "Room 10 laptops"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm10LT" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

End Select

You can then point your group policy redirect at c:\settings\menu and the machine will use the local start menu from that location

Mike.

[techie08]

I had exactly the same setup at a previous school, it worked like a charm and also stopped the missing startmenu and desktop problems you can get on wireless laptops using a redirected startmenu when the wireless signal drops. My simple script deleted the existing local copy and re-copied the start menu from the server everytime the machine started up. As it's only a handful of shortcuts it really didn't take too long to do, and extra time taken at startup is out weighed by the benefits in my opinion.

This script also examines the OU the computer account is in, and copies over additional icons for each set of workstations if you want it to, as defined by the case statement. That means you no longer have dead links on your start menu for programs only installed in a certain area of the school. Hopefully the rest of it is fairly self explanatory.

on error resume next

Const OverWriteFiles = True
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objFSO.DeleteFolder("C:\settings\startmenu")
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\DOMAIN\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\Basicicons" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

Set objWshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set objAdsSystemInfo = CreateObject("adsysteminfo")
Set objComputerName = GetObject("LDAP://" & objAdsSystemInfo.ComputerName)
Set objOU = GetObject(objComputerName.Parent)
strOU = replace(objOU.Name,"OU=","")

Select Case strOU

 Case "room 1"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm1" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

 Case "Room 3"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm3" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

 Case "Room 10 laptops"
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm10LT" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles

End Select

You can then point your group policy redirect at c:\settings\menu and the machine will use the local start menu from that location

Mike.

Hi

Im just about to give this a go but when i change the redirect to C:, wont windows automatically put in the Programs folder in the Menu folder as all the shorcuts have to be in the Programs folder?

Thanks