Speeding Up Logons

[OhDear]

I am currently attempting to speed up out Logons, so far I have set up a redirected Start Menu which has made a massive difference so far. Now I've noticed that the longest steps on the logon are;

• Setting Up Personalised Settings For...
  
• Applying User Settings...
  
• Waiting For The User Profile Service...
  

Is there anything I can do to check why these are taking as long as they do? - We are on Windows 7/Server 2008 R2.

[kmount]

How long is it currently?

What type of user profiles?

[OhDear]

With the redirected Start Menu, around 30/40 seconds. Mainly slowed down by the 'Applying Personalised Settings...'. We use Mandatory profiles.

[cscott]

30-40 seconds is pretty quick

[3s-gtech]

How big is your mandatory profile?

[ChrisH]

I did a lot of work on this earlier in the year. I made sure I split the gpos into different policies such as desktop settings and start menu settings etc. this allowed me to disable certain parts for testing a see what section added a massive delay. I started by enabling a section at a time and timing a new logon and any logins after that after a local profile had been set. I timed all this and once I found one of my sub sections causing a significant delay I would take note of all the settings and then make a new gpo and enable a few of the settings at once until I found the delay. I then had to decide if it was needed or if there was a better method to use.

[gshaw]

I'm really picky about logon times and from testing the ones I've found are...

 

- turn on Verbose messages (shows which policy is taking ages and lets the user see something is actually happening)

 

- GPP printer mapping, check your driver versions to make sure they're up to date as it can make a big difference

 

- delete the WinMail stubpath and IsInstalled values from the registry, particularly if you use mandatory profiles

 

- get your mandatory profile size right down, use WinDirStat to find junk that gets recreated anyway and remove it

 

- use the Event Viewer Group Policy Operations log to check how log each GPO is taking to process. Along with splitting out your GPOs you can isolate slow policies

 

- if you use GPP file creation policies check whether you have them set to Create or Update... if a file never changes don't have it recopied every logon

[ChrisH]

Thanks I forgot to mention the verbose logging for time delays as well. That is a great tip about the stubpath settings I will have to have a look into a few of those as I have been adding a few custom ones and never thought to delete a few as well.

[gshaw]

The WinMail is a particularly annoying one as it sets up a 15MB database on every logon if you don't kill it through registry

[OhDear]

The profile is 1.5MB in size, I have noticed it takes longer to log on when using a Terminal Server/Citrix. When logging on to a desktop it takes around 25 seconds, the longest pause if 'Preparing Your Desktop...'. I have tried changing the WinMail registry but cant see a difference. Is there a way to find out what is happening during the 'Preparing Your Desktop...'?

[CyberNerd]

The profile is 1.5MB in size, I have noticed it takes longer to log on when using a Terminal Server/Citrix.

 

We've been playing around with Citrix profiles. We found that the logon speed is twice as quick if you use local profiles and just redirect the star menu, desktop etc.

It worked for us and I think the downside of needing to manually fix the TS profile is worth the speed increase. esp as citrix deletes the profiles on logoff.

[OhDear]

We found that the logon speed is twice as quick if you use local profiles and just redirect the star menu, desktop etc.

That's got me interested, how can I make it so it uses the Mandatory profile for everywhere but the Citrix servers?

[CyberNerd]

That's got me interested, how can I make it so it uses the Mandatory profile for everywhere but the Citrix servers?

 

In Active Directory there is a "profile path" and a "Terminal server profile path". Set the "Terminal Server profile path" to look at "C:\xxxx" and manually put the profiles there.

It will help speed up citrix logins but you will have to manually move any tweaks to the servers - you can of course still redirect other parts of the profiles.

 

edit - you can still use a mandatory profile - just a different path

[ZeroHour]

One to watch out for is profile *cookies* that build up, generally speaking lots of small files can decimate transfers so I made a script that automatically deleted cookies older then 2 weeks which helped.

If the cookies are refreshed by the site they dont get cleaned but old ones are flushed out.

[OhDear]

Set the "Terminal Server profile path" to look at "C:\xxxx" and manually put the profiles there.

Just tried this, unfortunately it didn't make much of a difference with our setup.

Have noticed that the 'Setting Up Personalised Settings for...' message takes a few seconds longer on Citrix, seems to pause for a bit at 'Browser Customisations'. On a desktop it goes through really fast though...

[OhDear]

I spent most of today taking a proper look at our logons. It gets to the 'Preparing Your Desktop...' at around 15/20 seconds, then it decides to keep preparing it for a further 20/30 seconds... Is there a way to tell what is going on behind the scenes?

[synaesthesia]

Check eventlog on a client to see if it's struggling with something (like permissions on redirected/shared desktops) and also enable verbose logging as mentioned before to see if it can narrow things down.

[OhDear]

Check eventlog on a client to see if it's struggling with something (like permissions on redirected/shared desktops) and also enable verbose logging as mentioned before to see if it can narrow things down.

Just checked it again on a test machine (on HyperV) and got 22 seconds logon. Yet it is still taking its time on the TS/Citrix Servers... Strange

Edited October 2, 2012 by OhDear

[User3204]

What do you have on the desktop?

 

We've found that removing most of the icons from the desktop makes it logon quicker. It turns out that our students use the start menu anyway, so no-one really notices if I remove lots of icons.

[OhDear]

What do you have on the desktop?

 

We've found that removing most of the icons from the desktop makes it logon quicker. It turns out that our students use the start menu anyway, so no-one really notices if I remove lots of icons.

We have nothing on the desktop for students, and Staff only have the Recycle Bin.