Group Policy not deploying when laptops on WiFi - Windows 7, Server 2012 Domain

[abers]

Hi Everyone,

 

Hoping someone can shed some light on an issue i've had after rebuilding my machines this summer.

 

I am having an issue where no GPO's are applying when the laptops are on WiFi, if you ethernet them up and login it works fine, i.e drive maps and you can push a gpupdate on cmd and it updates fine.

 

If you boot on WiFi and login, the user profile builds but no GPO's are applied, i.e no mapped drives, no printers, and none of my restrictions. When running a gpupdate it fails untill you plug an ethernet cable in and then run hey preso gpupdate processes fine...

 

I've been on it all day and at one point i was playing around with DNS, altering registry items, changing all the GPO's for network wait time and slow link detection but i think im barking up the wrong tree as all my desktops using the same image work fine and obviously when you hardwire the laptops they work fine.

 

I used WDS to deploy an image created on a virtual machine and then added all the specific drivers to WDS but im wondering if driver issues would cause problems?

 

Im going to try a USB wifi dongle tomorrow to potentially eliminate this potential but any advice would be massively appreciated as after a whole day i feel like im running out of talent and its such an irritating

 

I've also done some research on encryption and it seems simply changing to the older tkip from AES can solve these issues but i'm yet to try this?

The laptops are all Dell's but are a mixture of 4yr old ones and some 6 month, all running Windows 7 64bit so various WiFi hardware.

 

Thanks people, any help would be massively appreciated.

Edited September 4, 2017 by abers

[ADMaster]

If a gpupdate /force fails on wifi but not ethernet I'd run standard connectivity tests.

Is wifi on different vlan / subnet?

Can you ping the DC by name and IP?

Is windows firewall in the way, ie. does the machine think wifi is a public network or something?

[abers]

Thanks for the reply ADMaster, I initially thought it might be a firewall issue and detetcing wifi as a different network location so i disabled both domain and private firewalls, the only one i didn't disable is Public so i will try that now.

 

I have just tried changing the encryption to AES and it has made no difference :-(

 

WiFi is on the same subnet just uses the DC's DHCP server.

 

can ping the server both by name and ip returns fine with no issues....

[abers]

So i've just tried a standalone USB wireless adapter and tried a GPupdate and the same thing happens!

 

It says processing fails as

 

Windows could not resolve the user name.....

 

Windows could not resolve the user name....

 

Which would point to DNS wouldn't it?

[abers]

scrap that, i was in nslookup. Edited September 5, 2017 by abers

[ADMaster]

It should use the DCs dhcp server, what does the wired network use.

run ipconfig /all and compare results between wired and wireless.

also run ipconfig /flushdns before you try pinging the DC by name as it may have been cached from the wired connection.

 

The only difference you should have is the last octet, if I've read your setup correctly.

[abers]

Right problem solved, after much head scratching it seems that it was our newly installed BitDefender AV that was causing the issue. Within the policies there is a 'monitor WiFi connections' unticked this and hey presto the laptops breathed into life!

 

Can't believe it was something as simple as that, I know need to now go and return my GPO's back to normal and undo any changes I have made across the network!

 

Big thanks to ADMaster for being there to help a damsel in distress!

[Miek]

Thanks so much for posting this. Same problem - Only took two days to find this post and fix the same issue!! Bit-defender firewall eliminated!