GoldenWonder Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 I'm getting desperate for any ideas here now! The problem I'm having is random PCs keep hanging at the login stage saying 'Applying personal settings'. This has happened on at least 50 PCs now, twice on one or two of them. Theres nothing in common with the users or PCs. Different accounts, PCs, SP2 or SP3, different subnets, times of day etc etc but once its hung at this point they can only power the pc off and try again (longest I've waited is an hour) Odd thing is, when the PC is hung in this state, I can still ping the NIC, and remotely manage it using the computer management MMC. I can't get a tasklist (tasklist /s) as this sits waiting on the admin pc side. So it appears the PC is hung, but not crashed completely. But its becoming a problem now as its random but happening on all types and ages of PCs. Checking the event viewer shows nothing abnormal, in the period the PC is hung, nothing is logged. Looking at the userenv.log file shows nothing other than the occasional message that does vary from PC to PC. I enabled verbose logging, but it only shows the Applying Personal Settings at the point it hangs. Users run a couple of simple scripts on login (have done for years) but these don't appear to be the problem as the server where the scripts are located shows that there is no access to the relevant share at the time. Any ideas? I've spent days on this and I'm stumped!
Michael Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 Are you using roaming profiles and if yes, how big are the profiles?
GoldenWonder Posted October 23, 2009 Author Posted October 23, 2009 Sorry, should have specified that! No roaming profiles, just local default profiles and group policy to assign user settings. Basic Policy for settings, one for Office and one for software restriction policies. None of which have changed in the last few months (problem has been for around 4 weeks now)
mb2k01 Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 Do you do folder redirection and/or GPO Internet Explorer branding? (Btw, I'm asking because I have the same problem and am trying to narrow it down as well!)
dalsoth Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 Had this and still do to a lesser extent. I use CC3 here though so i believe it is RM caused. I know though that there are other causes of this that are not RM related. On CC3 we found that if we ctrl alt del then logged off, then logged back on the problem stopped for that user 99% of the time. Also found that at he login screen if you can get to task manager you could push it through by finding the wscript.exe process i think and ending it. It is to do with the settings for their profile i think with things such as windows media player and internet explorer etc.. When we reset a profile or delete someones profile we tend to see it rear its ugly head again. Had RM work on this for us for weeks but never really solved it. Google it though because ours never went past this point even if we left it on all day and night. I saw some good posts on it on various google searches when i looked it up for us a while ago. Forgot them now though soz.
Guest TheLibrarian Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 I've only ever seen this once, it was a corrupt profile that even manually removing couldn't fix. The proof was creating a new user. The new user never experienced the problems. I *think* there was something stuck in the registry, but I couldn't find it (didn't spend much time searching). Good luck!
GoldenWonder Posted October 23, 2009 Author Posted October 23, 2009 Yes we do use folder redirection and IE branding! Maybe its something to do with that policy? Strange how its suddenly just started. It seems unlikely to be the user accounts, as its mutiple users across multiple machines (profiles on the machine are removed on every boot) Usually when it has hung the user can login normally after a reboot.
torledo Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 could be a dns issue. especially if there's been some reimaging or renaming of computers connected to the domain recently. unfortunately the sum of my knowledge about troubleshooing dns problems is scavenging stale records on the dns server and ipconfig /flushdns on the client. But i don't think it's necessarily going to cure this problem permanently. IT's a right PITA, and if you do find a solution, let me know.
mb2k01 Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 Yes we do use folder redirection and IE branding! Maybe its something to do with that policy? Strange how its suddenly just started. It seems unlikely to be the user accounts, as its mutiple users across multiple machines (profiles on the machine are removed on every boot) Usually when it has hung the user can login normally after a reboot. To tidy up / narrow down from some of the above comments, the network I'm experiencing it on is non-RM (completely vanilla). 2003 domain, majority of clients XP SP3. Folder redirection for all areas. IE branding including proxy settings controlled by GPO. The reason I mentioned both of those was actually about a month of reading similar posts on here and narrowing down to situation I had the same. It's not a huge problem for us, but I have witnessed logon times go up at least 50-100% which although I'm not getting complaints just makes me uncomfortable! I'm offsite today, but will try and change some things around during next week. (If you beat me to it let me know how it goes?)
GoldenWonder Posted October 23, 2009 Author Posted October 23, 2009 I'm determind to crack this now I've got started! DNS seems to be functioning fine. We dish out DNS settings via DHCP and use the LEA DNS servers as forwarders. This all works fine and theres no issues with PCs in general, just maybe 1-3 a day hang when logging in. Like mb2k01 I'm not getting complaints yet - but its bugging me and it worries me that its going to get worse!
mb2k01 Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 We sound like we have very similar configurations! I'll be back in the office in about an hour so I might knock up a couple of new OU's and GP's... Of course, if you're keen and already doing it I might hold off until I know if it's worked for you!
torledo Posted October 23, 2009 Posted October 23, 2009 Had this and still do to a lesser extent. I use CC3 here though so i believe it is RM caused. I know though that there are other causes of this that are not RM related. On CC3 we found that if we ctrl alt del then logged off, then logged back on the problem stopped for that user 99% of the time. Also found that at he login screen if you can get to task manager you could push it through by finding the wscript.exe process i think and ending it. It is to do with the settings for their profile i think with things such as windows media player and internet explorer etc.. When we reset a profile or delete someones profile we tend to see it rear its ugly head again. Had RM work on this for us for weeks but never really solved it. Google it though because ours never went past this point even if we left it on all day and night. I saw some good posts on it on various google searches when i looked it up for us a while ago. Forgot them now though soz. when we've created a sysprep image in the past, and deployed it, we notice some local user accounts seemed to take longer than others to load the browser customizations, windows media, windows update setting etc. sometimes interminably long i'm wondering whether this problem affects domain user accounts when they first log on and then persists on each subsequent restart and logon. wonder if it is something wrong with the default or all users profile ? could be worth investigating. as simply reimaging may not cure the problem if this is the root of the problem.
GoldenWonder Posted October 23, 2009 Author Posted October 23, 2009 Some of these PCs affected aren't even from an image - they were OEM XP installs that we've added SP2, Sp3 to over time. The local user profile is ok when they reboot and try again - very strange. Its as if some login script is hanging, but nothing shows up anywhere!
GoldenWonder Posted November 17, 2009 Author Posted November 17, 2009 Well I'm officially stumped by this problem now. Its still happening and theres no evidence of anything actually going wrong. The only thing I can assume is that its related to the users profiles, not the machine or software policies as it only hangs during the 'applying' stage. Does anyone know if the 'applying' stage is where the policies are written to the local machine, or is it where the policies are being read from AD?
Dom_ Posted November 17, 2009 Posted November 17, 2009 I had a similar issue ages ago, i can't quite remember but i believe it was due to either sophos being gay (technical term), or windows update service causing the machines to crash... I'll see if i wrote down what it was somewhere, bare with me...
GoldenWonder Posted November 17, 2009 Author Posted November 17, 2009 I did wonder about Sophos because we had an issue with one update (several years ago now) that caused a lot of PCs to hang (around 70% of them) However this was fixed by the next Sophos update so it only really caused hassle for a day or so. This is happenly randomly and has been for a few months now. We also use WSUS, but I only push updates out during the holidays - unless theres a really important one and I haven't done that for a while.
jack0w Posted November 17, 2009 Posted November 17, 2009 We're also using Sophos and have experienced similar problems, at times! Could that be the common thread?
machin05 Posted November 17, 2009 Posted November 17, 2009 We had a similar problem to this. The cause of our issue was our dns settings. I know you've already said that your DNS is working but how is it setup in DHCP? We have one internal DNS server, and this forwards to our LA dns servers for external name resolution. We used to have our internal DNS server and an external LA DNS server ip address set up in our DHCP leases, (on recommendation from the LA) but this was the cause of the problem. I read somewhere at the time that more than one ip adress in you ip configuration could cause your pc to hang at "Apply Personal Settings". As soon as we changed the config so that only our internal DNS server IP was specified in DHCP it was ok. Does this ring any bells?
ricki Posted November 17, 2009 Posted November 17, 2009 Hi We have had this problem for various reasons some are below. Sophos is broke. The time on the pc is not the same as the serve so kerberos does not work. A switch is causing problems because of amount of traffic from a machine spyware. A different version of internet explorer and or the wrong adm used in group policy. An administrator has not logged in what genuine advantage Dhcp server giving out wrong info or client not getting correct ip but has a profile on the machine so starts to log but cannot find the server. Machine has not been syspreped or newsided after a ghost. Dns problems Corrupt profiles on the client machine Huge files stored on desktop when using roaming profiles not your problem I have also seen it if windows or internet explorer is corrupt. Just some ideas. Richard
GoldenWonder Posted November 17, 2009 Author Posted November 17, 2009 (edited) Maybe Sophos is a common thread here. We have a single DHCP server here which points to the two AD integrated DNS servers. These DNS servers use the LEA DNS servers as forwarders (this hasn't changed in the last couple of years, but the problem has only started occuring in the last few months) Its almost impossible to diagnose as I don't know what PC will be affected next! EDIT: We're using IE8 ADM templates when the PCs are using IE7 (we're rolling out IE8 later on) but this was done only a few weeks ago, well after the problem actually started. Edited November 17, 2009 by GoldenWonder
zag Posted November 18, 2009 Posted November 18, 2009 (edited) I have this problem as well and it just started recently. Will just hang on "applying settings" for a couple of minutes then corrupt the profile. Only fix is to delete the local profile and start again. I also turned on verbous logging and it doesn't hang on anything in particular. Actually I'm very glad to hear others have this problem as it had me stumped for a while and very annoying. I run symantec so doubt its not an anti virus problem. Couple of things I've done recently and not seen the problem since - Uninstall Office 2007 SP2 (it started happening when we installed this) - Remove roaming profiles (pointless anyway for teachers accounts) - Check all DNS settings. - Remove internet explorer branding (I tested this many years ago and just forgot I did it) Touch wood I have not had a report of this in a week. I was getting 3 or 4 a day couple of weeks ago. Edited November 18, 2009 by zag
elsiegee40 Posted November 18, 2009 Posted November 18, 2009 Couple of things I've done recently and not seen the problem since - Uninstall Office 2007 SP2 (it started happening when we installed this) - Remove roaming profiles (pointless anyway for teachers accounts) - Check all DNS settings. - Remove internet explorer branding (I tested this many years ago and just forgot I did it) We get this problem from time to time... Symantec here too - Mandatory profiles would definitely fix it, but isn't necessarily practical for all users, unfortunately - DNS- agreed, but we still get it - IE branding not used here, so if it ay be a contributory factor, but not a cause.
GoldenWonder Posted November 19, 2009 Author Posted November 19, 2009 When you say removing IE branding, are you removing any policy that refers to the IE Maintenance Settings? We use the IE Maintenance settings to configure the proxy etc, I've removed the Browser title etc but the problem still occurs.
zag Posted November 19, 2009 Posted November 19, 2009 (edited) I just removed everything I could do. You know when its done because when you log on it should not show "applying branding policy" when you have verbose logging turned on. To be honest, this problem seems to have vanished since I removed the network copies of peoples profiles. Solved a lot of other problems as well doing that, I have no idea why I thought roaming profiles was a good idea in the first place Edited November 19, 2009 by zag
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