"Applying Computer Settings"

Any ideas how to speed this process up a bit (if possible?). We've dumped our HDGuard (Deepfreeze-a-like) system and changed to mandatory profiles \ group policies for teaching machines over the summer and now I'm just trying to cut the boot time to desktop down to the minimum I can.

Timing it (with autologon)...

- from cold boot to XP loading screen disappear is 27 seconds or thereabouts
- you then see the blue logon screen background for about 10 seconds
- downloading personal settings for about 2-3 seconds
- Applying Computer Settings (with lots of associated HDD rattle) for a good 30 seconds
- Applying Personal Settings for approx 10 seconds
- then desktop appears, AV loads up etc total boot time around 1min30seconds - 1min45seconds

It almost seems like the Computer Settings policy is reapplying all the time even though it hasn't changed. Is this normal or is a setting wrong somewhere?

Btw: we use folder, desktop and Start Menu redirection and some startup scripts so that might have something to do with it... Synchronous Policy Refresh?

1 minute 30 seconds isn't unreasonable. You didn't specify whether this was 10/100 Ethernet or wireless. Anywhere under a minute generally is what you should aim for.

Make sure your profiles are under 5MB (which helps a lot) and remember, AV software is all installed locally, so it might be the machines are low on memory. I know Sophos runs slow on machines with 256MB of RAM.

The more Group policies you have the longer this step will take. Each policy is processed fully (apart from software distribution type stuff) on every single logon in order to keep the settings at a knowen configuration. You could speed it up by reducing the number of policies as it downloads the whole policy each time (Vista is much better in this regard).

You could check to see which policies are taking the longest by turning on userenv logging and seeing how long each one takes to apply at logon. Policy Reporter from here: The Essential Software List should give this information.