For random users (wireless Lan) logon.bat does not run??? How to troubleshoot!

[kennysarmy]

I have been having quite frankly a s**t time trying to replace 13 windows XP wireless laptops with 16 Windows 7 SP1 wireless laptops.

The logon times are slower and I get seemingly random laptops who refuse to run the logon.bat (from the users AD profile) one moment and then run it fine the next.

 

It tests I can have 5 laptops setup in my office connected to the AP on the optimum driver settings - files are copied to and from in tests at 8M/s.

 

If I simultaneosly logon a test student account at least 2-3 will not have the drives mapped.

 

Eventviewer seems to offer no clues.

 

Is it possible that network speed (or lack of) or network congestion can cause the logon.bat file to somehow timeout?

 

Interestingly when I logon as a domain admin (less GPO's applied) the drive mappings are always there...

 

It's the random nature of this issue that annoys me the most....and of course with fixed PC's or even using the laptops on a wired connection it all works fine.

 

Other than concede defeat and perhaps trying to set the mapped drives via a GPO what could I do to work-out WHY oh WHY the logon.bat does not run under certain *unknown conditions?

[Michael]

I'm guessing your logon scripts are stored in the NETLOGON share (where they should be)?

 

Do you have more than one domain controller?

 

I would recommend mapping network drives via GPO. It does work well in Windows 7 and it will work with XP too.

 

Depending what your logon script looks like, always use the FQDN where possible. As Synack, myself and others have noticed, Windows 7 and 2008 R2 seems to favour the FQDN over NETBIOS. That's not to say NETBIOS doesn't work, it's just the FQDN seems to work infinitely better.

 

I've had similar problems with wireless clients and it was down to old wireless access points. From reading your other posts however, your wireless system is new, so I would recommend creating a secondary SSID with no security (initially) then try maybe WEP, WPA, then the strongest WPA2 AES.

 

Another thing to look at is drivers. Although Windows 7 SP1 has a fab driver database, downloading the latest driver (if available) is another step to try.

[kennysarmy]

We have now installed Windows 7 32 bit from the original DVD to 6 of the samsung laptops.

 

The generic bluetooth adapater is disabled.

The following drivers were installed:

chipset

free fall protection device

MMCR

USB

LAN

wLAN v14.2.1.1

 

In the wLAN properties the power management allow OS to turn off device has been unticked and the Bluetooth AMP unticked - everything else at default values.

 

The wLAN is running WPA2 - PSK - AES on Radio 2.4G - autochannel - on ch4.

 

Each laptop is currently pulling down large data from the network using the wLAN card.

 

The speed reported by each laptop during the copy process is:

2.7 MB/second

1.6 MB/second

1.7 MB/second

1.6 MB/second

1.1 MB/second

1.3 MB/second

 

Does this seem low? or is this acceptable throughput for 6 laptops connected to a single N-band AP?

 

 

LAN Port Status on the AP

2 eth2 None Up Up 1000Mbps full 10/100/1000 PoE

 

Other details from the AP

Wireless Mode: 11ng -- Operates with 802.11n, 802.11g and 802.11b devices in 2.4 Ghz spectrum only

Channel: Channel 4 [smartSelect]

Channel Width: 20 Mhz

Country Code: GB

 

These are client details as reported by the AP for one of the laptops:

Transmit Details

Good Packets: 1733086 (1801.0/sec)

Number of Retries: 948473 (291.0/sec)

Physical Layer Data Rate: 130.0 Mbps

Throughput Estimate: 98.2 Mbps

Packet Error Rate: 0 %

Estimated SNR: 11 dB

 

Receive Details

Good Packets: 937746 (999.0/sec)

Discards by CRC Error: 50099 (7.0/sec)

 

 

Anyone got any comments to make?

Does it look good?

Is it not going to get any better?

[kennysarmy]

Yep and simultaneously all SIX laptops lost connection to the AP....

GREAT!

[Michael]

Manually set the channel to 1, 6 or 11.

[kennysarmy]

Yep - the AP was on smartselect on ch7 - apparently it's been learing the ch with the least interference - although we have no other nearby AP's etc.

I've manually set to ch1 and the transfer rates are 20KB/second - well they are before the \\server\share becomes unaccessible...

 

Sighs...

[kennysarmy]

The current issues notwithstanding are the transfer rates with just 5 laptops attached to the single ruckus AP OK?

2.7 MB/second

1.6 MB/second

1.7 MB/second

1.6 MB/second

1.1 MB/second

1.3 MB/second

 

I worry that as we have 16, the transfer rates will be crippingly low when they are all trying to logon simultaneously....

[Finch7]

Just racking my brains for random Wireless issues I've had in the past.

 

Are both the APs and the wireless cards configured to Open authentication not shared.

 

Also try windows config or the 3rd party config utilities.

 

One test I do when setting up is ping the laptop continuously from my desktop and reboot it to see at what point the laptop regains network connectivity. Our laptops here take up to 30 seconds from standby to regain connectivity. I believe the wait for network GPO helps with these sort of issues.

[kennysarmy]

Encryption is set to WPA2 - PSK - AES on the 2.4G band...

 

Is around 1-2MB/second transfer rates good, bad or average with 5-6 connected laptops to an AP?

 

The AP reports for one randomly chosen laptop:

Physical Layer Data Rate: 130.0 Mbps

Throughput Estimate: 85.2 Mbps

[kennysarmy]

Tempted to buy another N-access point so I can test them side by side.

 

Can anyone recommend anything decent?

[Finch7]

85MBps = just over 10Mb/s so yes I guess so. Assuming all 6 are sharing the same throughput.

[Finch7]

Tempted to buy another N-access point so I can test them side by side.

 

Can anyone recommend anything decent?

 

You're using ruckus? Well the dual band ones here work well and looking at my access point list they do load balance their connections over both radios.

[kennysarmy]

85MBps = just over 10Mb/s so yes I guess so. Assuming all 6 are sharing the same throughput.

 

We only get upto about 8Mb/second when doing data transfer tests with ONE laptop - with all 6 connected the speed drops to around 1.5Mb/second...

[Finch7]

That's probably normal behaviour I just googled throughput for 802.11n and the figures coming up aren't much better than what you are getting.

 

Like I said unless you get a dual band AP you're going to hit throughput limitations on the one radio. Of course your clients will need to support 802.11a to take advantage of any load balancing.

 

But even 1.5Mb/s is good enough for most activities your users will be doing I'd have thought?

[Finch7]

Yep and simultaneously all SIX laptops lost connection to the AP....

GREAT!

 

We've digressed a little bit. That could be the cause of your logon bats not running. Probably the best place to focus on, connections being dropped.

[kennysarmy]

Is it possible to find out which of my 3 DC's authenticated a user?

 

We just dragged 5 kids in to my office from the corridor to test the laptops.

 

4 logged in fine.

1 did not get the right desktop OR run the logon script.

 

We were able to get to command line and run echo %logonserver%

 

How can we ascertain the same infro from the others remotely?

Thanks.

[kennysarmy]

I've added this to our logon script:

echo %date%,%time%,%username%,%computername%,%logonserver% >> \\Fp4\ShApps\pcaudit\logonlist.csv

 

So at least those that work we can see where they logon to....

[kennysarmy]

Just picked another 5 students...

4 logged in fine

1 did nt...

 

I tried to run Group Policy Results on the failed laptop - but the user was not listed...so ran on a previous user:

Results state:

Component Name Status Last Process Time

Group Policy Infrastructure Failed 24/11/2011 14:38:53

Group Policy Infrastructure failed due to the error listed below.

 

The network name cannot be found.

 

Note: Due to the GP Core failure, none of the other Group Policy components processed their policy. Consequently, status information for the other components is not available.

 

Additional information may have been logged. Review the Policy Events tab in the console or the application event log for events between 24/11/2011 14:38:46 and 24/11/2011 14:38:53.

[Finch7]

Seen the exact same error on a wired connection recently. Basically the switch wasn't initiating the connection fast enough. Moved it to another switch all was fine. Not really helpful other than to investigate your wireless which is where we were at earlier.

[kennysarmy]

Would I glean anything from constantly pinging the PC's as the users attempt to logon?

Is there any other live or recordable monitoring I can do to the 5 laptops to compare the failed logon ones with the ones that work ????

[psydii]

Read the troubleshooting guide/pages for your wlan - you should find advice on how to capture various levels of tracing information and how to interpret it.

 

Also take a look in Windows Event Viewer-Application and Services Logs->Microsoft->Windows->WLAN-AutoConfig / DHCP / UserProfile Service you may find some clues.

 

Then there is always this document:

Troubleshooting Windows Vista 802.11 Wireless Connections

 

HTH and good luck.