Strange Log Off Issue

[Guest richard]

Got a bit of a weird one here.

 

Have a problem with machines not logging off properly. They hang for around 20 mins and then log off. Its not affecting all machines but the problem is increasing. If I logon on locally then all is fine. There are no scripts running at logoff as that was my first thought.

[Guest richard]

Bump

 

Anyone fogt any ideas as I'm getting a bit of grief now abiut this

[Diello]

Anything in eventlogs of the workstation? Not storing huge files on their desktops or anything?

[Guest richard]

I have checked the logs and there is nothing out of the ordinary there and there are no huge files on the desktops.

[cookie_monster]

What OS are the clients running?

 

Do any scripts run at logoff?

[gwendes]

Is there a dialog box when they're logging off?

[Guest richard]

Clients are windows XP SP2 connecting to a 2K3 server. There are no dialog boxes coming up when they log off.

[cookie_monster]

Any logoff scripts running or any tasks running in the system tray?

[Guest richard]

As I said earlier there are no logoff scripts running and nothing in the system tray in hanging. This beginning to really bug me now as everything is checking out okay.

[cookie_monster]

Is this affecting all users / systems or just a few?

 

Any changes to them recently?

 

Have you tried with a user that has no roaming user profile and resides in the default users container so no policies apply?

[cookie_monster]

Sorry is see you said "not affecting all machines"

[Guest richard]

We had a problem with broken dns recently but that was fixed. All the users use mandatory profiles and those have been checked and are fine.

[elsiegee40]

Are the profiles of the affected users massively large? Is it taking ages to save the profile back to your server?

[Guest richard]

The profiles aren't huge but one thing I have noticed is that when I log off there are no problems and that it seems to be confined to the students and staff.

[Joanne]

i sometimes have problems with logging off when the user has used adobe reader?

[Guest richard]

i sometimes have problems with logging off when the user has used adobe reader?

 

I have encountered that in the past but it usually throws up a message saying that adobe reader is not responding but am getting nothing like that this time round.

[cookie_monster]

Can you isolate a user that it is consistently happening to?

 

If you can then you could try removing the roaming profile and then move them into an OU or container with no policies to test.

[GlennT]

You mentioned a problem with DNS? What was that?

Have you tried ipconfig /flushdns on the affected machine?

[Guest richard]

Can you isolate a user that it is consistently happening to?

 

If you can then you could try removing the roaming profile and then move them into an OU or container with no policies to test.

 

There is no one user that it is consistently happening too unfortunately which is making it all the harder for me to try an track down. The only thing lft for me to try is to rebuild the profiles

[witch]

at one point my antivirus started running huge scans on log-off, showing nothing to say it was doing it - try disabling it on one machine?

[Guest richard]

at one point my antivirus started running huge scans on log-off, showing nothing to say it was doing it - try disabling it on one machine?

 

Could be worth a try but will not be able to try it till Monday as I'm at home now.

[sahmeepee]

Another thing you can try when you get back to school is running filemon to see which files are being accessed or not found during logoff. "But logging off will close filemon!" - you can make filemon persist across login sessions by getting it to run under the system account:

 

Logged on as an admin:

Create a folder in c:\ called monitor

Copy in filemon.exe and psexec.exe from microsoft/sysinternals

Create a shortcut to psexec.exe

Change the shortcut command to read:

 

c:\monitor\psexec.exe -sid c:\monitor\filemon.exe

 

Copy the shortcut somewhere where a pupil will be able to get at it (e.g. all users start menu).

 

Log on as a pupil then:

Right click on the shortcut you made and do run as...

Run it as the local administrator account

Make sure it's logging everything to the window

Hit log off

Wait 20 minutes

 

Log on as an admin again then:

Wait for the filemon window to show up again (should appear well before login completes)

Pause logging (don't delete the logs so far!)

Scroll up in the window and see what it's been doing for the last 20 minutes!

 

 

I can't guarantee you will fix your problem, but if it's file access related that will almost certainly put you on the right path.

[Gimbow]

Do you even get to the shut down dialog box or is it hanging on the desktop? Also, Are there any mapped drives that are trying to sync?

[Guest richard]

Do you even get to the shut down dialog box or is it hanging on the desktop? Also, Are there any mapped drives that are trying to sync?

 

The shutdown dialog box appears with out a problem. The users seem to log out as normal and then they get to a blank screen with just the mouse pointer and nothing else.

[Guest richard]

This is really peeing me off now I have run Filmon and can find nothing that jumps out at me, though with over 300,000 line to check it its going to take some time to check properly.

 

I have tried ipconfig /flushdns but it has not made any real difference. Though I am toying with removing a machine completely form the domain and giving it a totally new name to see if that helps at all.