Any way to speed up a redirected start menu

Our systems are on Windows XP Pro on a domain. All users have a redirected start menu in one share so we can manage program shortcuts from one place.

But some menus take above 15 seconds to open when a user browses the start menu. I think it's to do with the fact that some of those programs aren't installed so it tries looking for them with no luck. Any way to beat this lookup delay?

Is there any way to speed up browsing of a redirected start menu? Any tips or any way you manage redirected shortcuts to programs?

Thanks

I would double check all of your shortcuts first!
From experience its shortcuts that are looking for missing files on mapped drives / network shares that cause most problems. Shortcuts looking for missing files on a local hdd dont usually take that long.

I think you can disable it via group policy as well I would start with looking at:
NoResolveTrack
NoResolveSearch

NoResolveSearch: Core Services

I had a similar issue here, to solve it I redirected the Start menu to a new folder on C:\, and then used wItem installer to create an MSI to install all of the shorcuts.

I use GPP for any changes/additions or deletions now, and everything is much faster.

We use App-V which dynamicly creates shortcuts depending on the user that is logged in - this way there is no shortcut redirection required.

Its a scenic way to go about solving a little problem but there are so many advantages to App-V you may wish to take a look at it sometime.

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Originally Posted by Mr.Ben

I had a similar issue here, to solve it I redirected the Start menu to a new folder on C:\, and then used wItem installer to create an MSI to install all of the shorcuts.

I use GPP for any changes/additions or deletions now, and everything is much faster.

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So you created an msi which contains your shortcuts and it installs them to a folder on the local hdd?

Sorry but I dont see how this would help, if a program is missing i.e. an application is only installed on some of the PCs not all of them windows explorer will still search for the missing file.

You can also use offline files to cache the startmenu / desktop for laptops that are used away from the network so I don't see why you need an msi.

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Originally Posted by ToyHeartsFan

I would double check all of your shortcuts first!
From experience its shortcuts that are looking for missing files on mapped drives / network shares that cause most problems. Shortcuts looking for missing files on a local hdd dont usually take that long.

I think you can disable it via group policy as well I would start with looking at:
NoResolveTrack
NoResolveSearch

NoResolveSearch: Core Services

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Thanks for all the replies everyone.

I've just tried the above as a user group policy. I enabled both. It still took ages. I then decided to make subfolders inside a folder which had many shortcuts. The majority of those folders opened immedietely. But only one subfolder took as long to load as it did before I made these subfolders. Meaning one of those shortcuts creating this slowness is in that subfolder. Just have to find out which one. But even if that's the case, why didn't the above work to ignore resolving it?

Is there any way to maybe prevent the shortcut icons appearing? Maybe it's trying to resolve shortcut icons?

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Originally Posted by nLinked

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

I've just tried the above as a user group policy. I enabled both. It still took ages. I then decided to make subfolders inside a folder which had many shortcuts. The majority of those folders opened immedietely. But only one subfolder took as long to load as it did before I made these subfolders. Meaning one of those shortcuts creating this slowness is in that subfolder. Just have to find out which one. But even if that's the case, why didn't the above work to ignore resolving it?

Is there any way to maybe prevent the shortcut icons appearing? Maybe it's trying to resolve shortcut icons?

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I would check the shortcuts that you are still having problems with, one of them is probably on a network share thats not available. I havent had to resort to using the noresolvetrack / noresolvesearch because replacing the problem shortcut fixed ours when we had a problem but it should still work.

Are you sure the new polocies are applying correctly did you run a gpupdate /force on the workstation after changing the policies?
They are only setting registry options could you add them to your logon script and see if it works that way?

Not sure if it searches for icons if they are missing or if you get a blank icon...


Update: this might be worth a look as well
http://www.group-policy.com/ref/poli...during_roaming

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ToyHeartsFan

So you created an msi which contains your shortcuts and it installs them to a folder on the local hdd?

Sorry but I dont see how this would help, if a program is missing i.e. an application is only installed on some of the PCs not all of them windows explorer will still search for the missing file.

You can also use offline files to cache the startmenu / desktop for laptops that are used away from the network so I don't see why you need an msi.

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Correct - the MSI only deals with programs that are installed on every machine (I didn't make that clear). I use an MSI Install to reduce the amount of shortcuts I'm creating using GPP.

Distribution of Shortcuts with GPP is targeted at groups of computers to ensure that only machines with the products installed have a shortcut. (The security groups are also used to target the installations of such products). I also find it an easy way to ensure that we are not using more licences than we should.

The problem with redirected Start menus for all shorcuts is that those that cannot be resolved cause the whole thing to slow down - so you end up with several loopbacked policies for different areas in which different software is installed.

When I had a single redirected start menu (before my current solution) I used to extract the icons and put them on a share and make the shortcut point to a script on the network which checked to see if the product was installed before running it, so the shortcut always resolved to the script.

Put the shortcuts in folders, that will fix it.

Also have the start menu share on a server with an ssd drive.

Ours is instant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zag

Put the shortcuts in folders, that will fix it.

Also have the start menu share on a server with an ssd drive.

Ours is instant.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by ToyHeartsFan

I would check the shortcuts that you are still having problems with, one of them is probably on a network share thats not available. I havent had to resort to using the noresolvetrack / noresolvesearch because replacing the problem shortcut fixed ours when we had a problem but it should still work.

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I found the problem shortcut. It's target no longer existed. The opening of the menu was still a bit slow though. After putting them in subfolders, they open much, much quicker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nLinked

I found the problem shortcut. It's target no longer existed. The opening of the menu was still a bit slow though. After putting them in subfolders, they open much, much quicker.

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I once found a shortcut that pointed to a unc path on a workstation rather than the local exe...
Another time an ICT Coordinator decided to try installing some software and she copied a rather large exe onto the re-directed desktop instead of a shortcut...

Ours are also grouped by subject folders with some sub folders under those with only limited progs in the main start menu.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr.Ben

Correct - the MSI only deals with programs that are installed on every machine (I didn't make that clear). I use an MSI Install to reduce the amount of shortcuts I'm creating using GPP.

Distribution of Shortcuts with GPP is targeted at groups of computers to ensure that only machines with the products installed have a shortcut. (The security groups are also used to target the installations of such products). I also find it an easy way to ensure that we are not using more licences than we should.

The problem with redirected Start menus for all shorcuts is that those that cannot be resolved cause the whole thing to slow down - so you end up with several loopbacked policies for different areas in which different software is installed.

When I had a single redirected start menu (before my current solution) I used to extract the icons and put them on a share and make the shortcut point to a script on the network which checked to see if the product was installed before running it, so the shortcut always resolved to the script.

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In a secondary where you have say a bank of PCs in a music room, science lab etc with subject software on I can see how targeting the installations could help. As we are a primary it wouldn’t be as easy to setup its only things with limited licences (which we try to avoid) or specialist software such as rossetta stone that are not installed site wide. E.g. Rosseta stone was installed in the class rooms it was needed in at the time so it’s not as easy to target as say a dedicated room and I’m happy with the way our AD structure is setup and wouldn’t want to change it unless I had to.

We are also still on 2003r2 so GPP would be a pain to manage for us. Even with some software not available on all PCs we don’t seem to have the problem others are reporting. But maybe that’s because we are also using subfolders in our menu structure and possibly the load on our network / servers is lower?