Windows 8 domain login issue

[AndiMarv]

I have recently been testing Windows 8 and its compatibility with the application suites used in our main ICT rooms - Thankfully no problems there!

I have disabled the 'Show first sign-in animation' GPO so that I can see what is going on, besides most of our pupils have new laptops with windows 8 preloaded and know what they are doing.

 

When I domain join one of these suite computers during a users first login I get the following screen

This screen stays for a long time - I recorded 5 minutes several times.

 

Entirely by accident one of the students realized that if you press CTRL + ALT + DEL to interrupt the Preparing Computer screen you can then access the desktop immediately.

This makes me think that there isn't any vital config going on during this preparing computer stage and it is probably hanging.

 

Has anyone else encountered this?

I am not sure what to do about this long login wait.

 

Thanks

[squeeky]

thats strange. Why not enable verbose login process to see which service / process is hanging rather than just preparing windows. You can do it in group policy. Maybe its one of your login scripts

 

This is for server 2003 but im sure its the same in newer because ive done it on 2008r2 and it was the same

 

How to enable verbose startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff status Messages in the Windows Server 2003 family

[AndiMarv]

Thank you, I had not come across that setting in Group Policy before.

I have applied the setting but the login stage still showed preparing windows and not any other useful information.

The GPO setting has applied though as I got loads more information about the login process.

[squeeky]

Is it the first login ? when you first login with 8 it does Show first sign-in animation (which you have disabled) but whilst it does this it configures metro. If you user presses ctrl + alt + delete like you mentioned to interupt the "preparing windows" is the computer fully functioning ? Also have you got any profile limitations or roaming profiles ?

[AndiMarv]

The computer is fully functional after pressing alt + alt + del

I do not use roaming profiles and there are no limitations that I know of.

[squeeky]

fully functional including metro ?. We found that even tho we had disabled roaming profiles for users they had previously had this enabled and still had a Profiles folder which windows 8 insisted on using until we deleted it. this resulted in a blank screen after login

[AndiMarv]

I have uninstalled all of the metro apps using powershell so it shouldn't be loading those.

We have never used roaming profiles at all here.

[WingChunIT]

Hi there, I've prepared a Tablet Acer W700 with Windows 8 Pro, then I joined the domain on Admin server then it work perfectly fine. But now I've a same problem with you only when our Virgin Media internet is down. Everyone in Admin side can sign in Admin server, but only only one person she can't sign in her account in Windows 8 but Windows XP and 7 are fine. Can anyone have that experience and able to assist me please. Many thanks in advance.

[Willott]

@AndiMarv - did you have any success with tracking this down?

[AndiMarv]

Sadly no.

Logging into Windows 8 for the first time can take over 5 minutes here, no obvious reason why.

[Willott]

Gah - if I find out what's causing it, I'll let you know (just digging through procmon presently...)

[squeeky]

you dont have a login script thats broken do you ?

[Willott]

No login scripts involved - slow initial login -large profiles - post at the bottom seems to suggest it may be related to metro apps - I haven't uninstalled ours, but very few then show on the start menu. Am currently trying recreation of mandatory profile to see if that helps...

[Dragon]

I'd be interested to hear if you found a solution to this or any way to improve the login times.

[Willott]

Not sure I can help with original issue, I've created a new mandatory profile on the windows 8 machine and login time is now much much quicker. Followed guide here:

 

Howto create a Windows Server 2012 / Windows 8 Mandatory Profile | Jeroen Tielen

[WingChunIT]

Thank you Willott. I'll try it, hope it would be successful.

[smithson83]

Has anyone had any sucess in this. I'm currently building a Win8.1 Ent Image to roll out, but am finding th same issue, first login can take from 2min+, which is a shame as the rest of it works quite well.

[Jtrotta]

@AndiMarv any solution to this i have literally the same exact problem. Trying to resolve this before the next school year.

[AndiMarv]

I am sorry to say that I have not found a solution to this at all.

 

It is very frustrating but seeing as my plan is to move forward with Multipoint Server 2012 installations it doesn't seem to be an issue with MP.

[TheCrust]

Thread resurrection time!

 

Did anyone find a resolution to this issue?

 

We moved to 8.1 Enterprise over the summer - and staff and students are complaining about excessive logon times. Staff have fully roaming profiles which means logon times can naturally be a bit variable (as you would expect if the profile is as big as a house!) but students use a central mandatory roaming profile that's quite small.

 

When the problem hits, it shows itself as a two-stage delay: the user logs in and gets a "preparing windows" for a while, then this disappears to leave a black screen with cursor for a variable amount of time before the desktop displays. The problem is definitely much worse on laptops used wirelessly than on wired desktop PCs.

 

What really makes diagnosis entertaining is that sometimes the problem doesn't appear at all - for example, first thing in the morning when there are barely any users in the building. This suggests to me that if it were a problem at the client end, surely the fault would be there all the time?

 

Any thoughts?

[jack_knows]

Hi I had a similar problem and it was caused by the students/staffs redirected start menu from our Windows 7 GPO, set up a windows 8 OU and put the windows 8.1 clients in there, created a loop back that redirected everyone's start menu to the local profile, no roaming or mandatory profiles takes about 40-45 seconds first logon on a windows 8.1 Tablet over the wireless, then it is really fast the next time it is used. Works for me for now as I only have a 30 windows 8.1 tablets not sure if it would be useful with a full roll out, I have tried to export a start screen layout but that is not taking, so the desktop needs shortcuts to needed programs, but the desktop redirection to a network share still works as in windows 7 so OK.

[steve_nfi]

I have this problem too but it is only affecting a couple of users. 99% of Staff and students have logged and created W8 profiles OK.

We have W7 and W8 machines here still but in general if a user logs onto a W7 machine they use their W7 profile and the same with W8.

The other couple of users can log onto the W7 profiles fine but when they come to W8 just a black desktop. The actual network profile is empty.

I've tried all the usual things, deleting profiles both network and local. Certain machines will logon again fairly quickly and some can take an age but the end result is still the same.

Black desktop.

[beany1]

Thread resurrection of a resurrection!

 

Did you ever find a solution @TheCrust?

 

I'm experiencing the exact same symptom's you describe with a group of laptops logging in... but not every time!

[TheCrust]

I found our problems were caused by a combination of factors.

 

The first was the mandatory roaming profile for our students was messed up - it wouldn't allow the GP-assigned backdrop to be displayed for instance, so something wasn't quite right with it but I never bothered to find out exactly what as regenerating it from scratch as a test was quick and as it sorted that particular issue out, I ran with the fix and moved on. This alone helped speed up logon times on wired machines.

 

I then discovered that our Desktop / Start Menu / Start Screen layout redirections weren't applying properly which caused a slight delay - if I remember it correctly, I nailed it down to the Start Menu structure not being quite right. I think Windows 8.1 is less forgiving than previous versions of Windows appeared to be to this and tweaking the folder structure sorted that problem.

 

Finally we discovered our wireless network wasn't set up as optimally as it could have been. While it worked fine under moderately light use, it clogged up quickly as the load went up. Tweaking the WLAN and adjusting the corresponding settings on the laptops via a SCCM-deployed script sorted that final piece of the jigsaw out and logon times on laptops were significantly reduced.

 

Been fine ever since.

 

Hope that helps!

Edited February 18, 2015 by TheCrust

[mattpant]

I found our problems were caused by a combination of factors.

 

The first was the mandatory roaming profile for our students was messed up - it wouldn't allow the GP-assigned backdrop to be displayed for instance, so something wasn't quite right with it but I never bothered to find out exactly what as regenerating it from scratch as a test was quick and as it sorted that particular issue out, I ran with the fix and moved on. This alone helped speed up logon times on wired machines.

 

I then discovered that our Desktop / Start Menu / Start Screen layout redirections weren't applying properly which caused a slight delay - if I remember it correctly, I nailed it down to the Start Menu structure not being quite right. I think Windows 8.1 is less forgiving than previous versions of Windows appeared to be to this and tweaking the folder structure sorted that problem.

 

Finally we discovered our wireless network wasn't set up as optimally as it could have been. While it worked fine under moderately light use, it clogged up quickly as the load went up. Tweaking the WLAN and adjusting the corresponding settings on the laptops via a SCCM-deployed script sorted that final piece of the jigsaw out and logon times on laptops were significantly reduced.

 

Been fine ever since.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Hi,

 

Do you have a screenshot of your Redirected Folders Structure / Start Menu Sturucture that you amended to achieve faster login times?

 

What sort of adjustments did you make on your Wireless network / network adapters to fine tune them to get better performance?

 

Thanks

 

Matt