whats going on then?!
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Discussion

billb

Original Poster:

3,198 posts

283 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all

Whats actually happening in between logging onto a windows 2000 network after u have put in user name and password and actually getting ure desktop up??

We have w2k network with w2k clients and roaming profiles. its taking ages for some clients to get their desktops up - understandable for some with big profiles but most have mandatory ones that are small ( arent they? ) so what else could be happening to cause the delay - u just get the blue screen for ages until the desktop appears?

any help appreciated thanks.

dontlift

9,396 posts

276 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
Domain Security is being applied to file system etc, Profile located and loaded
Drives being mapped to the network

etc etc etc

Yes it can take an age especially on a large network when everyone logs in at the same time.

_DJ_

5,027 posts

272 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
dontlift said:
Domain Security is being applied to file system etc, Profile located and loaded
Drives being mapped to the network

etc etc etc

Yes it can take an age especially on a large network when everyone logs in at the same time.


Nearly, but not quite.

a) You shouldn't set file system permissions using policies (or else it'll take ages to download/apply)
b) Even if you do, that's the machine policy which is applied on boot, not on logon
c) Profile located, well I suppose that a part of the process but it doesn't take a long time (few k from the DC at most)
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.

When it takes a long time to logon usually you want to check

a) profiles are not too large. Mandatory profiles can be as large as you want (just check the size of the folder)
b) you're locating an appropriate DC. On boot the machine will locate a suitable DC at the time. If your logon servers are very busy or your sites are poorly defined you could get a slow/remote DC. Once logged in type echo %logonserver% to see.
c) DNS. Can the clients locate the DC's using DNS or are they taking ages to figure out they can't before trying NetBT name lookups.

Darren

billb

Original Poster:

3,198 posts

283 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
_DJ_ said:

dontlift said:
Domain Security is being applied to file system etc, Profile located and loaded
Drives being mapped to the network

etc etc etc

Yes it can take an age especially on a large network when everyone logs in at the same time.



Nearly, but not quite.

a) You shouldn't set file system permissions using policies (or else it'll take ages to download/apply)
b) Even if you do, that's the machine policy which is applied on boot, not on logon
c) Profile located, well I suppose that a part of the process but it doesn't take a long time (few k from the DC at most)
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.

When it takes a long time to logon usually you want to check

a) profiles are not too large. Mandatory profiles can be as large as you want (just check the size of the folder)
b) you're locating an appropriate DC. On boot the machine will locate a suitable DC at the time. If your logon servers are very busy or your sites are poorly defined you could get a slow/remote DC. Once logged in type echo %logonserver% to see.
c) DNS. Can the clients locate the DC's using DNS or are they taking ages to figure out they can't before trying NetBT name lookups.

Darren


thanks - any way of testing easily if they're using dns first?

pdV6

16,442 posts

279 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
_DJ_ said:
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.

Unless the mapped resource isn't available and then it takes ages to time out before moving onto the next one?

Plotloss

67,280 posts

288 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
Move the internet explorer cache outside the users profile so the IE cache is not updated when the user logs off and not consequently dragged down when logging back on.

You can change the location through Internet Options.

_DJ_

5,027 posts

272 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
pdV6 said:


_DJ_ said:
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.



Unless the mapped resource isn't available and then it takes ages to time out before moving onto the next one?



But in that case, the pop up box saying something along the lines of "couldn't map your drive, do you still want to map it next time" is a bit of a give away .

As for checking whether DNS is used or not, use NETDIAG.EXE -www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/netdiag-o.asp

edited to add: Plotless - Mandatory profiles are never changed, so that shouldn't be an issue. However, it's a good idea to exclude the internet cache from profiles (isn't that the default setting nowadays?)

>> Edited by _DJ_ on Friday 27th February 11:25

mondeoman

11,430 posts

284 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
_DJ_ said:

pdV6 said:



_DJ_ said:
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.




Unless the mapped resource isn't available and then it takes ages to time out before moving onto the next one?




But in that case, the pop up box saying something along the lines of "couldn't map your drive, do you still want to map it next time" is a bit of a give away .



Ours sometimes take ages to map all drives (about 10 drives on the server) and one drive is consistently "unavailable" for no reason that I can see, and we don't get that message, just a pop-up on screen once log-in is complete. Baffled.

_DJ_

5,027 posts

272 months

Friday 27th February 2004
quotequote all
mondeoman said:


_DJ_ said:



pdV6 said:





_DJ_ said:
d) mapped drives are reconnected on logon but it doesn't take long, the actual mappings are stored in the profile.








Unless the mapped resource isn't available and then it takes ages to time out before moving onto the next one?






But in that case, the pop up box saying something along the lines of "couldn't map your drive, do you still want to map it next time" is a bit of a give away .





Ours sometimes take ages to map all drives (about 10 drives on the server) and one drive is consistently "unavailable" for no reason that I can see, and we don't get that message, just a pop-up on screen once log-in is complete. Baffled.

Can't really suggest anything further without seeing it. Just to recap, it takes ages to map drives, pops up an error on 1 particular server and you get an error msg (and a red X on the drive in explorer)?
Then, clicking on the drive it connects OK?
I must admit, all our drives are mapped using logon scripts and are not persistent so we never have this problem...


>> Edited by _DJ_ on Friday 27th February 16:32