Windows 7 massive delay at Welcome screen

[Sheridan]

We've got some new netbooks with Win 7 pro on. They are setup to connect wirelessly and so far they work but, after entering your network login details it stays at the Welcome screen for ages (around 5 minutes!)

 

Eventually you get logged in. No errors in the event log as such and there is a good signal strength on the wireless (the XP clients login much quicker)

 

Drivers are fully updated, as is the OS. I know Windows 7 is a bloated mess but this doesn't seem right to me?

[MrEprise]

Try going into 'Programs and Features', 'View installed updates' (link at the side) and look for the following update: "Update for Microsoft Windows (KB971033)". Found it? Uninstall it.

 

Although its a perfectly legitimate update that's supposed to update Windows' Activation and Validation mechanism, this update caused my own PC at home to take somewhere between 5-7 minutes to get past the Welcome screen. Removing it cut the time down to about 15-20 seconds. It isn't a widely known problem though, as it doesn't affect the majority. It took me another install on a Laptop recently to find that update to be the culprit when it also hung on the Welcome screen.

[dyoung5]

If you enable verbose login messages (How to enable verbose startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff status Messages in the Windows Server 2003 family), you can then see what is causing the login to take so long. My guess is folder redirection, we had a problem whereby Win7 didn't like having folders redirected to the users' home drives. We fixed it by using the UNC path.

[Brpilot99]

Just a thought do they take the same time if you disable wireless and connect them with a network cable .....

[Sheridan]

I've just checked the logs again and found something that might be an issue:

 

Winlogon: The winlogon notification subscriber is taking long time to handle the notofication event (Logon)

 

After the Folder redirection events I see:

 

Winlogon: The winlogon notification subscriber took 159 second(s) to handle the notification event (Logon)

 

159 seconds! Thats 3 minutes worth of delay at the point of applying folder redirection. All of the folder redirection events show success.

 

I'll check out that update as well. I've tried with the cable in and it is faster, but still quite a delay. Our folder redirection uses a mapped drive so that might be worth checking as well.

[Willott]

Check the times on the folder redirection events - if they're well before the second notification, it may not be that that's slowing down. Do you do any printer mapping?

[Sheridan]

We have a couple of network printers on them, but they're not mapped by group policy. We still use the GlobalAdd command to add the printer for every user on the machine as this suits the situation (mixed of XP and Win7).

[simpsonj]

Ah, long login times, wireless and Windows 7, are you sure you're not working here? A couple of things that I've noticed since I swapped over to Windows 7 last summer which might help you.

 

1, The wireless system you used with Windows XP might not cut it with Windows 7. We've had to improve our WAPs from a £40-50 Dlink with a 100mbs cat5 connection to a £200 Cisco that has a 1000mbs CAT5e connection to cope with 16 laptops logging on simulataneously. This drastically helped improve our login times in one area.

 

2, If you're using mandatory profiles, cut the size down to as small as possible. If you've created a mandatory profile, there may well be a .jpg file that has been copied over as a background file which is over a 1meg in size and is (usually) completely unnecessary.

 

3, The amount of RAM is critical for a speedy windows login, as I've just discovered. A normal windows 7 installation takes about 30 seconds to login (on our machines with 512 RAM). A normal windows 7 login with an antivirus installed takes over 1 minute 30 seconds to login. Add another 256 or 512 RAM and the login time reduces dramatically.

 

4, As Willott mentioned, printer mapping can increase login time as well. Adding the printer as a share printer, rather than installing it on each login, can save valuable seconds.

 

5, I'm about to try having the profile stored on the local hard drive, and redirecting student logins to that profile to see if that speeds anything up, though I have my doubts. Might be worth a try though!

 

6, I have students redirecting to their Home Drives, which is their own hidden share on the server, and that hasn't noticable affected login times for me...

 

Hope something there helps!

[Sheridan]

Theres some good info on here!

 

I've been testing and noticed the following:

 

- Verbose logging shows delays at the stages of 'Internet Explorer branding policy' and 'Group Policy Folder Options' - longer delay on the latter

- Printers are appearing ok (mapped to the local default user profile using GlobalAdd)

- We don't use mandatory or roaming profiles, just group policy to apply settings

- These are brand new netbooks with 1.66 processors and 2gb RAM-should be enough?

- Wireless is a managed Ruckus system - generally works well with other clients.

- The update mentioned above isn't installed!

 

Also the last boot I did, I got the black screen/mouse pointer for ages before the desktop appeared. Windows 7 is very,very broken on thes netbooks from a users perspective!

 

EDIT: did a test login hardwired. What a difference, logged in with desktop in 30 seconds. Didn't realise how bad the wireless was!

We have had loads of problems with ASUS before not working with WPA2 (on the 1008 models) but this is terrible.

Edited February 11, 2011 by Sheridan

[simpsonj]

Doesn't sound like any of the issues I had are relevant then!

 

The only other potential issue is the amount of GPOs you have assigned to these notebooks. I've read that the fewer GPOs you have, the better, even if it means combining multiple GPOs into one, larger, GPO. I can't see that adding more than a few seconds onto a login time myself, but there you are.

 

Of course, an obvious thing to look at is drivers. Are you using the drivers that Windows 7 found, or the ones which the manufacturer issued? Might be worth swapping from one ot the other?

[Sheridan]

I've checked the GPOs - same number as the XP clients, usually the same GPOs anyway.

 

We've tried older and newer drivers but pretty much the same results. I guess it does point more to driver issues than anything else at the moment.

[Willott]

Have a look at the driver advanced settings and have a fiddle, that has sometimes cured slow transfer rates/connectivity issues with the normal laptops we have here.