Logon Times/Speed

[Quackers]

I have been experimenting with the script kindly provided by Quackers as we suffer a lot of HDD 'pollution' from locally stored profiles and I liked the idea of getting rid of them automatically! The only problem I have now is whenever I open an MS Office document I get prompted for user name and initials. Any idea how to supress this prompt for user information?

 

Brian

 

I do not suffer from this problem. Have you tried running word etc before you upload the profile?

[ChrisH]

I have been experimenting with the script kindly provided by Quackers as we suffer a lot of HDD 'pollution' from locally stored profiles and I liked the idea of getting rid of them automatically! The only problem I have now is whenever I open an MS Office document I get prompted for user name and initials. Any idea how to supress this prompt for user information?

 

Brian

 

I do not suffer from this problem. Have you tried running word etc before you upload the profile?

 

That is exactly what is needed to supress that promt for information. It should be part of your your initial/default profile.

[broc]

I have been experimenting with the script kindly provided by Quackers as we suffer a lot of HDD 'pollution' from locally stored profiles and I liked the idea of getting rid of them automatically! The only problem I have now is whenever I open an MS Office document I get prompted for user name and initials. Any idea how to supress this prompt for user information?

 

Brian

 

I do not suffer from this problem. Have you tried running word etc before you upload the profile?

 

That is exactly what is needed to supress that promt for information. It should be part of your your initial/default profile.

Well, I am glad someone is awake! Thanks

 

I was playing with Office 2003 customisation & uninstalled/reinstalled the product while also playing with the profiles & obviously got the order wrong. Isn't it amazing how sometimes you cannot see the wood for the trees.......

 

Now all I need to do is get logons to be a bit quicker.

 

Brian

[Inox]

quackers - when I follow your way of mandantory profiles, my start menu and the all users one merge - now i know this is by design but does this happen to you too? If not then how do u get around it ?

 

thanks

[Quackers]

What do you mean by merge? Like if you have an All Users folder "Applications" and a Users "Applications" its seen as one menu? If you mean this then yes this happens.

 

All i can recommend is you have a script at the same time as the profile copy to the machine to delete everything in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu, and make sure all shortcuts come from the profile for that set of PC's.

[Michael]

Typically it takes around 10 - 40 seconds on our network. Children use mandatory roaming profiles and staff just normal roaming profiles. In my experience keeping roaming profiles as small as possible (typically under 3MB) is important otherwise logon time will lag. We run our workstations at 100Mbps speeds and once logged into XP, file transfers and browsing network drives are fast. Bearing in mind most of my machines are 5 years old I'd like to think I've done a good job

[john]

thats very good!

[Inox]

quackers - roger that and thanks for the help :-)

[eean]

We're a primary school and each year group has it's own logon name with a mandantory profile. Staff have their own roaming profiles. Different year groups need to have different profiles (they are differentiated - e.g. reception don't double click).

 

Pupil logon is 45sec total: 15 sec loading profile (1mb) and 30 applying personal settings. This is the same on new and 5 yr old machines. (can be longer over wireless loading profile).

 

The slow bit is applying personal settings. This seems to be caused by group policy. When I disable the policy it is really quick but I loose folder redirection and some restrictions. Is there anyway of making it save all the policy info in the user.man file? Then I could disable the policy.

 

Thanks.

[eejit]

This is a very interesting thread and it would be great if Quackers created a wiki on how he shortened the logon process.

 

We have mandatory profiles and group policies in a SErver 2003/XP domain. Logons take about 55 seconds, which people do complain about. I followed the instructions to use the default local profile instead of mandatory - but that just dropped the logon from 55 to 51 seconds.

 

I then removed the policies and the logon was 11 seconds.

 

Removing the policies AND the mandatory profile dropped the logon to 9 seconds.

 

So, clearly it's the group policies that are causing the major part of the delay in our instance. I guess that there is nothing we can do about that is there?

[Quackers]

Is it folder redirection thats causing your delay? I get this too if i use them, but only on SP2 XP PC's. So i just manually set them in the user.dat ?

[Geoff]

The more group policies a client machine has to process the longer it'll take to startup and login. You might want to see if you can combine some related group policies together.

[eejit]

Is it folder redirection thats causing your delay? I get this too if i use them, but only on SP2 XP PC's. So i just manually set them in the user.dat ?

 

hmmm, yes, we do use folder redirection alright and when I removed the policies that would have been removed too. I will give that a go. Cheers

[eejit]

The more group policies a client machine has to process the longer it'll take to startup and login. You might want to see if you can combine some related group policies together.

 

Yep, I had to go through all those a few months ago and combine them into a "Pupil" policy instead of one policy for every configuration/restriction - that knocked about 15 seconds of the logon time I think.

Cheers

[MkII]

Have you got any policies defined that do the same as not configuring - if you know what I mean!?

[eean]

The more group policies a client machine has to process the longer it'll take to startup and login. You might want to see if you can combine some related group policies together.

 

We've only got one user-side policy and that's taking 30 secs to load.

[Geoff]

Something is hillarious broken then. I suspect DNS. How many domain controllers do you have? Are they setup correctly? What does DCDiag think? What about your clients? Are you using DHCP and pointing them to the Windows AD DNS Server(s) correctly? What does the GPMC think? Does GP Results/Modelling show errors?

[DMcCoy]

Something is hillarious broken then. I suspect DNS. How many domain controllers do you have? Are they setup correctly? What does DCDiag think? What about your clients? Are you using DHCP and pointing them to the Windows AD DNS Server(s) correctly? What does the GPMC think? Does GP Results/Modelling show errors?

 

In my experience there is a gpo setting that introduces a delay on logon. I have yet to identify which one though (not enough time). I even went as far as capturing the network packets during the pause, I didn't notice anything odd, it just stops and waits or does something. My personal policy has fewer settings and logs in fast, another for students is slow. My profile creator account is fast and uses most of the settings used by the students.

 

This is from a good clean install of a 2003 domain and server, it has always been this way, machine speed doesn't affect the pause.

 

DNS is fine, DCdiag, Netdiag all report no problems.

[eean]

Something is hillarious broken then. I suspect DNS. How many domain controllers do you have?

1 - Windows 2000 Server.

Are they setup correctly?

I think so

What does DCDiag think?

All tests passed, including dns one.

What about your clients?

What can I test here?

Are you using DHCP and pointing them to the Windows AD DNS Server(s) correctly?

Yes. I remember having it wrong once and it took 3 minutes to logon.

What does the GPMC think? Does GP Results/Modelling show errors?

How do I test this?

 

Thanks.

[Geoff]

What about your clients?

What can I test here?

 

The client equivalent of DCDiag is NetDiag. Use it.

 

Yes. I remember having it wrong once and it took 3 minutes to logon.

What does the GPMC think? Does GP Results/Modelling show errors?

How do I test this?

 

As its W2k you can only do the results. Login to a problem workstation with a user. Then load up the GPMC on one of your admin PCs. At the bottom there's a Group Policy results section. Add the User/Computer combo as a report to this bit. It'll list any problems coming up when that user logs on to that computer. What Polices are processed. Event Log items. Etc.. Just go through everything looking for anything unusual.

 

BTW. You might want to consider an upgrade to W2K3 server at some point. It's really much nicer.

[eean]

As its W2k you can only do the results. Login to a problem workstation with a user. Then load up the GPMC on one of your admin PCs. At the bottom there's a Group Policy results section. Add the User/Computer combo as a report to this bit. It'll list any problems coming up when that user logs on to that computer. What Polices are processed. Event Log items. Etc.. Just go through everything looking for anything unusual.

 

Thanks.... I think I've checked that out and I can't spot anything too odd. I will have to fiddle around with different policies - I have a niggling feeling that folder redirection is holding it all up. It feels the need to write an event log everytime it does it (correctly) so it must be feeling proud about itself for something!

[s-j-f]

"I must be doing something very wrong - Ranger network - when we have 4 or 5 suites of computers all being used, it can take up to 20 minutes for some of our kids to get logged on."

Remove ranger!!!

 

Are you using roaming profiles?

 

We had this same problem. I stopped using roaming profiles (after realising they weren't needed anyway) and literally overnight the problem disappeared 8) .

 

I did a lot of research (on the net, peoples experiences etc) on RP's before ditching them and found most people seem to have had problems with them! getting rid of them was one of the best things I ever did!

[Ric_]

@free: Your slow logon my be down to the way Ranger messes with the logons. When I used it last it wasn't very efficient. Does a non-rangered user still experience the slow logon?

[free4440273]

@free: Your slow logon my be down to the way Ranger messes with the logons. When I used it last it wasn't very efficient. Does a non-rangered user still experience the slow logon?

 

i am not using ranger!!! my logon times are 10 secs. think you have the post mixed up!!!

[free4440273]

"I must be doing something very wrong - Ranger network - when we have 4 or 5 suites of computers all being used, it can take up to 20 minutes for some of our kids to get logged on."

Remove ranger!!!

 

Are you using roaming profiles?

 

We had this same problem. I stopped using roaming profiles (after realising they weren't needed anyway) and literally overnight the problem disappeared 8) .

 

I did a lot of research (on the net, peoples experiences etc) on RP's before ditching them and found most people seem to have had problems with them! getting rid of them was one of the best things I ever did!

 

i am not using ranger!!! my logon times are 10 secs. think you have the post mixed up!!!