slow log on windows xp

[m25man]

Something else you might want to check here are your switches.

 

STP is a good LAN killer. It is misunderstood and highly dodgy to use on a non-redundant link.

 

You should be using "RSTP" or "Fastswitching" rather than STP if your switch supports it, it's got an undesirable overhead and has the habit of blocking ports and uplinks when a new NIC appears along the switched run!

 

Here is a scenario for the un-initiated....

You have a lab of 30 machines, 24 of these are switched on and are linked to the network.

All 24 currently have IP addresses and are looking at the login screens.

 

Your switches have STP enabled because in the past little johnny has "Short Circuited" two network outlets with a patch cable and this seemed to help stop the symptoms.

 

So, teacher tells the class to login.

The 24 machines start the login process running scripts and mapping printers.

 

The remaining 6 are booted from cold by the users.

 

Just to add to the problem one of the six still has the BIOS set to LAN Boot first so it Broadcasts for a PXE server (F12)

 

The uplink port(s) that has STP enabled BLOCKS ALL TRAFFIC whilst the MAC addresses of the six cold boot machines are checked across all ports effectively stalling the entire classroom!

Once happy the uplink is unblocked and the traffic resumes flow.

 

Hey, but it's not over yet, the PXE booting has eventually passed or failed because it could not find an active WDS server so the last machine is now loading Windows and is initialising it's NIC drivers again... oh look! STP starts blocking again whilst it checks the MAC tables all over again...

 

In the meantime your policies have not been processed correctly or your printer scripts have failed due to the latency introduced by the STP blocking and the added overhead stuck on top of every packet travelling from you Lab to the server room!

 

STP is a really useful tool when used for the right reasons but it can equally cripple your network when used incorrectly.

 

So, check all of your ports from desktop to logon server and fileserver or where your users home folders and profiles are kept.

Turn off STP, use RSTP if you must or "Fastswitching" is you have Netgear managed switches.

 

Now try your logins.....

 

OK, it won't fix everyones problems but if it works for just a few people that read this thread it was worth writing it up!

 

This is especially relevant to those using WDS/RIS/GHOST where the DHCP server is on a different machine to WDS.

STP will cause you some serious DHCP latency when you are trying to initialise your PE boot processes.

 

I can think of a dozen other ways that STP can hurt your network performance without trying too hard and only a few where it is absolutely essential (such as the 10Gbe fibre loop we run around the hoops stadium).

Edited January 31, 2009 by m25man

[titch]

I am not sure if this will help you...and to be honest I am not sure how this works but was chatting to another local tech who adviced I try intaliing windows script host 5.6 on the slow workstations.

 

After restarting pcs it probably cut my login times by half. The screen seems to stay on applying settings for slightly longer (but this seems good to me as it stops the kids trying to open things before pc is ready) but pc is ready to use ammediately. It definately had more of an effect on my older kit than newer though.

 

Like I say though I have no idea what it does, just installed it blindly to try it out but might be worth a go. If anyone can enlighten me I would be greatfull.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C717D943-7E4B-4622-86EB-95A22B832CAA&displaylang=en

 

Good Luck