Start Menu now taking a long time to load!!

[HodgeHi]

Hello all,

A problem has just raised its ugly head and i can't understand why.

I had the start menu and other folders re-directed to lets call it server 1. Now this is an old server but serverd the shares well from an old 10GB SCSI drive.

I have purchased a new proliant 150 3g server called server 2. I have now migrated all these shares over to the new server and store them on a 250 GB SATAII drive.

I re-directed the folders to the new shares on the new server and all was fine. I decided to down the now redundant server 1 to make sure no problems were apparent, and now for some unknown reason the start menu when clicked on takes a long time to appear, at least 30 secs to a minute to appear when hovering over "programs". This did not happen on server two.

I thought dns could possibly be the cause but the dns settings are the same as they come from server 3. I have checked the GPresults and all GPOs are applied and in the event viewer no errors are logged.

I have checked the permissions but not really a problem as they are just read only for the share and security. I don't know what else could cause the problem but it happened immediately as soon as server 1 went down.

Does the mandatory profile cache the server that distributes the re-directed folders?

[HodgeHi]

No one has any ideas as to the reason behind this problem?
I have re-booted server 1 and the start menu pops up like it should again.

I noticed though that when it does pop up (when server 1 is down) if you leave it for about 30 secs it then takes a long time to appear again. It's as if then menu is looking for server 1 but all thats on the programs list are office and the smart learning client that points to C Drive. The rest of the shortcuts are on the desktop which appears straight away.

This has got me scratching my scalp right off.

[jet5y]

With server 1 off, navigate to the folder containing the start menu, does it appear immediately? There's clearly some link with server 1 going on. Try recreating the shortcuts.

[HodgeHi]

When i navigate to the share holding the start menu it appears straight away as you would expect. I think i will re-create the shortcuts as you say and see what happens.

I agree with what you are saying about the link with server 1, to the extent where i re-created the mandatory profile as there were remnants of the shared printer from server 1 in there as well even though i use Ric_'s? script found elsewhere on this forum that should delete the queues on log in.

But this did not resolve the issue.

[krisd32]

It Will be a shorcut in your re-directed start menu that'll still be looking for "server 1" i had this when changing servers a few weeks ago! trawled through all shorcuts to find that 1 was causing the issue! What a pain!

Kris

[HodgeHi]

I see what you are saying Krisd32 and i immediatley thought the same. However as i said before in my veeeerrry long first post that the shortcuts are all pointing to the C Drive.

However saying that if i recall correctly i may have used office installed on the original server 1 to create the shortcuts.

I cannot down the server at the moment but i will post back the results.

[HodgeHi]

Well this seems to have resolved the problem. I re-created the shortcuts using a client machine and then placed these into the startup folder share on the server.

I don't understand why this would be such an issue though as both on the server and the client the shortcuts point to the c drive? Is there some sort of additional information used when creating shortcuts?

[krisd32]

i've found sometimes when creating shorcuts off a client to the server it can take its \\machinename\prog name\prog.exe with it to the server i can't explain why it does it but if you recreate the shortcuts it generally works.

Kris