Prevent logon to a laptop before network is ready

[gazlee]

Hi everyone, I've had a quick search around and unless I'm phrasing it differently I can't seem to see another thread where this has been covered.

Basically at the moment we have a recurring issue, whereby students seem to be catching on to the fact that if they attempt to logon to a laptop as soon as it's started up, it doesn't have a fully established connection to the WiFi network and therefore throws up the "No logon servers available" message. Thus resulting in either a trip to the help desk for the student, or a frustrated teacher calling us out to the room saying half the class can't logon, only to find that by the time we get there everything is magically working!

 

Is there a way to either stop a user being able to login until the network is ready, or give some other sort of indication on the logon screen as to the readiness of the network?

 

We have the "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" GPO enabled, but it doesn't seem to have much effect in regard to our problem.

 

Thanks in advance,

Gary

[Davit2005]

What laptops are you using, have you tried updating drivers??

[ITGURU]

Only time we found this was if the wireless couldn't cope with the number of clients.

A class of 30 would try logging on, first 10 or so would get on straight away, the others would receive "no logon servers available" and have to keep trying and eventually get on.

 

After an upgrade of wireless points we can now get 30 on just, with the odd one that doesn't map the drives, but if log off and back on they then get it.

 

As far as I know the "always wait for network...." just means it won't log on cached without running the Group policies. I have our policies set to 0 logons to cache, so that clients always have to wait for it to see the network before logging on.

[kidpressingbuttons]

Dealt with this issue this morning on some dell laptops.

 

Here is the workthrough I use-

 

open search, type "services.msc" open services.

Scroll down to "wlan auto config" right click, stop the service.

 

Navigate to

"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Wlansvc\ delete everything in this folder leaving only a folder called "profiles" delete everything in the "profiles" folder except for a folder called "interfaces" delete everything in the "interfaces" folder)

 

Restart "wlan auto config" connect to your wireless network, enter

your passkey, (ensure the connect automaticly box is checked)

 

Restart your computer job done, your computer will now connect to your wireless network automaticly on boot.

[Ephelyon]

Only time we found this was if the wireless couldn't cope with the number of clients.

A class of 30 would try logging on, first 10 or so would get on straight away, the others would receive "no logon servers available" and have to keep trying and eventually get on.

 

After an upgrade of wireless points we can now get 30 on just, with the odd one that doesn't map the drives, but if log off and back on they then get it.

 

As far as I know the "always wait for network...." just means it won't log on cached without running the Group policies. I have our policies set to 0 logons to cache, so that clients always have to wait for it to see the network before logging on.

 

Are these access points running off a Fast Ethernet or a Gigabit switch port?

[gazlee]

Hi both, the laptops are mostly Very PC ThinBooks equipped with Intel AC 7260 WiFi cards, we have some other machines though with the same issue, and the APs are all Xirrus High Density Arrays with AC radios in a one or two areas and standard ABGN radios in all others.

If I go in at the start of a lesson and tell them all to wait 10/20 seconds when the username and password boxes appear they all go in fine first time. So I don't think it's a capacity thing, considering we've seen the Xirrus arrays happily deal with 300+ simultaneous connections in our common room

[gazlee]

@kidpressingbuttons Are you using a preshared key or RADIUS there? In our environment they're all RADIUS authenticated by the computer account, so we don't have a passkey to enter if we were to do this.

[kidpressingbuttons]

Preshared key im afraid.

[ChickenDhansak]

This link may also help you to enable a wireless connection pre-logon on your domain.

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/2047-enable-wireless-connection-pre-logon-on-domain

Edited November 23, 2015 by ChickenDhansak

[gazlee]

Hi @ChickenDhansak , we don't have any problem with getting connected before logon, it's just that there's a slight delay of about 10/20 seconds or so before the the connection gets fully established which gives the students ample opportunity to pull the old "my computer doesn't work, so I can't do anything this lesson" trick!