Please wait for the User Profile Service problem

[witch]

All my computers - IT suite PCs, netbooks, the lot are taking an age to log on or off. I enable verbose messaging but the only thing that comes up is 'Please wait for the User Profile service'. They do log off or on eventually but it could take up to 30 mins.

 

These are Win 7 machines on a Server 2003 and up till now there has been no problems

Printers (of which students only get one) are deployed by login script

I have deleted all the user profiles

I have looked at event viewer with no results

I have very few group policies.

What can I do and where can I go to look for an answer?

 

The only pointer I have is that if I log on as administrator it doesnt happen

I do hope that someone can help - the machines are nigh on unusable as they are

[X-13]

99% of the times I had this problem it was caused by either DNS issues or network bindings.

 

Are your servers multihomed? In other words: do you have multiple network cards? If so, make sure your "production" card is on top in the network connections -> advanced settings -> adapters and bindings.

 

You could also enable user env logging (search microsoft how to do that)

 

 

[source:Technet]

 

This is for 2008 terminal services. But it could help.

[witch]

I have one server with one network card.

I have restarted it several times and also the switches

[elsiegee40]

You don't have any loop-backs do you? Little darlings connected two network points using a Cat5e cable or somesuch?

 

I had something similar when I made the mistake of using socket 12 on my switch - it shouldn't have been used due to the fibre links in place

 

EDIT This probably isn't the case as you login as admin (across the network, locally or both?)

[X-13]

Are you clearing the profile at logoff?

 

Also, are these old profiles from XP or new ones for Win7?

 

From the fact it works fine as admin, I'm tempted to say "software restriction policy"...

[Netman]

Try running dcdiag Domain Controller Diagnostics Tool (dcdiag.exe)... anything showing in event logs?

[X-13]

You don't have any loop-backs do you? Little darlings connected two network points using a Cat5e cable or somesuch?

 

If spanning tree is on, then it shouldn't make a difference.

 

If it's off, the network would just crash. [Or so I've been told.]

 

 

@witch, does it happen everwhere, or just on certain computers? If it's only on certain ones it sounds like a setting has gone weird. Possibly folder redirection.

[witch]

Done some investigating - seems it is only the kids and NOT the staff so user based rather than computer based. The only difference is the logon script that I can see - but there may be other differences. The user profiles all seem to be the same but what can I look for to try and identify the situation please? Obviously the pupils are in a different OU to the staff but what could have caused this? Edited February 23, 2012 by witch

[AngryTechnician]

If you've identified the differences (e.g. the login script), try removing the login script temporarily and see if the problem goes away. If that doesn't solve it, try disabling your GPOs one at a time to see if one of those is to blame.

[witch]

right - had some help and a bit of time..

As i thought, it was a profile issue - but the problem was all the local profiles on the machines (all 75 of them) re-corrupting the profiles every time they were recreated. We searched around and found a Win 7 version of the lovely delprof, which wasnt there last time I looked, and we put it in a startup and shutdown script. it didnt work on all of them and a few were left behind but we did those by hand.

Recreated the profiles and it *seems* Ok now

But I wont be there tomorrow as I spent all day there today so I will await the call with trepidation

What I dont understand is WHAT went wrong and WHY all the childrens profiles were corrupted - by what??

If anyone can tell me - I would be SO grateful - I HATE not knowing

thanks for all your help both on here and by PM

[AngryTechnician]

Profile corruption can be caused by a lot of things, but the only time I've seen it on a large scale it was due to a particular version of Symantec Antivirus locking the registry hive during logoff and preventing it from being copied back to the server properly. That affected all accounts though, not just pupils. It took a lot of hours with ProcMon and strong drinks to figure it out.