Painfully slow login

[Callum]

All machines across the school are imaged using SCCM with the exact same captured image. Some machines work perfectly fine and login within about half a minute. However there are random machines that are just dreadfully slow, and staff have timed them taking (up to) 36 minutes to login, 35 minutes of which are spent on a black screen. After so long, 'Preparing Windows Desktop Updates' briefly appears at the top-left and then they're logged in.

 

I've tried to analyse a computer during login using a remote task manager, and the results are very weird. During the login, the computer never uses more than 5-10% CPU, and during the black screen it's practically using 0% CPU. There is fluctuating disk reading/writing, but only a matter of kbps (not like the HDD is struggling to cope). However there is approx. 22,000 handles running on ~1,000 threads. Is this normal for a computer, or is there some insanely broken program running at login?

 

Can anybody recommend steps to try and further investigate the issue?

[Steve21]

Are these freshly imaged machines or after a few weeks/./months etc?

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/162189-slow-group-policy-processing.html#post1387594

 

Might be worth trying that on an affected one

 

Steve

[Callum]

Not entirely sure how long it takes, but they've all been imaged within the last month or so.

[Steve21]

What I mean though is like if it's first login can't be that WMI issue more likely broken GPO etc, but if you hard shutdown a machine 2-3 times in a row the WMI can corrupt.

 

Steve

[psydii]

This set of blog posts will definitely help identify the root cause. It is a bit of a deep-dive.

 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2014/10/27/becoming-an-wpa-xpert-part-11-troubleshooting-long-group-policy-processing.aspx

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/133978-list-hotfixes-folder-redirection-windows-7-clients.html

Edited December 19, 2015 by psydii

[Steve21]

This is also an epic update to use to test if it's patching issues

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2775511

 

Steve

[rrrrr]

Defiantly sounds like a waiting and timing out issue.

Check event logs see if its showing what it eventually fails to access.

Check your gp preferences, these can sometimes be the cause of slow logins.

How bigs the user profile being pulled down?

 

I once had 30mins login times. I had blocked ini files from being allowed in students home drives using file screening. (Thought it was a way of everyones home drives just being called "documents" on server and thought they have no valid reason for needing them)

When computers logged in, they were trying to create the desktop.ini file on their home drives and were disallowed causing the 30min logons!

Long shot, but another idea

[Sagima]

Use msconfig on a machine and disable all the non-microsoft startup stuff (and all programs that run at startup)

If you swap the hdd with another machine does it follow the hard drive?

If you install windows form disc does it still act slow?

Does your previous image have the same problem now?

Does the slowness exist when disconnected from the domain?

[dapaulio]

Sound suspiciously like gpo timeout

 

How random is it? To a specific model computer (could be driver). Does it consistently delay on every logon? Specific user group? We had a case of certain computers Tring to install a print driver by mapping a printer via gpo and failing.

 

Try disabling gpo one by one in a test ou group

[Ripleys]

Enable descriptive logon message (Verbose) and see where it is slowing down.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/325376

[win]

check if it is picking up the same GPs as the other computers, or move it to a different OU.

 

if all else fails, image it using Disk to disk from a working computer

[woodham]

you cant jusat image it disk to disk that will cause real problems if its on the domain

[win]

Sysprep