Networked Windows XP Login

[Hotshot4152]

I am a student working for my university's computer network system. One of the problems I am trying to work on is to figure out what causes the long delay after you enter your password into the login screen. After pushing ok, it takes more than 30 secs loading and applying personal settings. Its not a lot of time, but I am looking for any way to streamline the process. Really all I want to know is what the computer is DOING for those 30 secs. If anyone knows anything about this please help, I can't seem to find any information about this.

-Thanks!

[Ponch]

Roaming profiles ?

[Oxygen]

Roaming profiles ?

i think it is Roaming Profile

[cluberti]

I think you're all guessing (you might be right, but it's still a guess). It would probably be better if we got some logging data to confirm or deny our guesses.

[Siginet]

There are a lot of reasons for the delay. Roaming Profiles is one. Basically it needs to download the users Desktop/My Documents and so on to the computer each time it logs in. So it could cause logins to take quite a long time if you have a lot of files. I am personally not a fan of Roaming Profiles.

Another big reason it can take a lot longer to login could be an incorrect DNS setting.

If the dns is incorrect it can take much longer to login. For instance let's say your IP of the computer is like this:

IP Address: 192.168.1.101

Sub Net: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 192.168.1.1

DNS1: 192.168.1.1

DNS2: 192.168.1.2

In this example DNS2 represents your Servers Ip Address which handles the DNS for your local network. DNS1 is the IP of your Internet Router.

The problem with the example is that DNS1 is the internet and DNS2 is the server.

So in this case when a user logs into their computer the computer thinks it is supposed to authenticate through the Internet IP. So it goes to the internet looking for its authentication server for a while. Until it times out and goes to DNS2 and authenticates rather quickly on the server.

So the way to fix this is to swap the IP's so that 192.168.1.2 is DNS1 and 192.168.1.1 is DNS2.

This was an exact issue I had on one of the first networks I setup and I think is a very common issue. It can also make many things on the computers connected to the network to have delays.

To fix this you just have to go to the device that is handing out DHCP and make sure it hands it out correctly. Or you can input the computers IP info in statically on each computer.

Hope this helps.

[Hotshot4152]

Yes thanks Siginet that helped a lot, I had figured roaming profiles had to be at least part of the problem, although I didn't know the techical name for them. I was thinking that creating a cache containing the desktop, documents and such, sence the individual has all their data stored on a networked drive.

The DNS setting is something I actualy came accrossed while researching but I didn't think much of it. Do you know of a way I can find the server's IP and the router's IP address from my computer?

Edit: Forgot to ask Cluberti, what type of logon data will help? I can do the level's below:

NORMAL

VERBOSE

LOGFILE

DEBUGGER

or NONE of couse

Edited November 6, 2009 by Hotshot4152

[Siginet]

If you know the name of the server you may be able to get the ip by doing a simple ping to the server. As long as they don't block pings.

cmd.exe:

ping [servername]

If you have rights to chaange your IP information on your computer go ahead aand see what your IP info is. Look at what is listed for DNS.

If they look like internal IP addresses then maybe swapping the dns's around will do the trick. But be very careful when changing IP info. You don't want to make an ip conflict.

[Hotshot4152]

Well i looked at the DNS setting, looks like that is fine, no conflict there. Now is there a way to Cashe the files that are being downloaded from the server to the local machine, becuase 3/4 of them are the same for every user.

[MrJinje]

What does Performance Monitor on your server say. Could just be an over-taxed machine.

Take a look at these reg settings and see if local cache for roaming profiles is disabled or not.

Roaming Profiles Local Cache

[Hotshot4152]

hmm ok so all i have to do is exclude all the files that arn't the network drives from

Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Name: ExcludeProfileDirs

Type: REG_SZ

Value: Temporary Internet Files;Cookies;Recent;History;Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Then the profiles should be very small, and all the settings for all that junk will be on the computer, making for a faster startup time.

(Correct me if i'm wrong)

Also does anyone know how to network the my Documents drive to a network drive, I attemped it once, I found a website that tells you to edit some registry value to redirect it, but all that happened was it slowed the whole computer down massivly and the drive was not redirected.

[Hotshot4152]

Ok I talked with some people and they like the idea of not loading all that stuff onto the Roaming Profiles. However, and I may be quoting them wrong, they like all that stuff loading on and off the computer because they can then change it centraly if it is needed. They are looking for a "best of both worlds senario" where the data is cashed on the computer, at it seems like the roaming profile is the same for all users (I intend to check that as soon as i can get admin access to the server). And when the computer logs in, before loading the roaming profile it looks at a doccument stored on the server. This document would contain information which would allow the computer to figure out if the cashed data stored on the computer has been changed. If it has not, the computer will load the cashed data, if it has been changed the computer will load from the server, and update the cashed accordingly.

I was wanting to know...is that even possible? And if it is can someone point me in the right direction, cause I don't even know where to start with this.