[Help] - Resume from screensaver/powersave problem

[james2210]

Hi

We have an intermittant problem affecting a few random PC's on our network.

nLite PC build

Windows XP SP2

Hotfixes Pack

Novell Client 4.91

Novell ZENworks 6.5

Very occasionally, when someone returns to their workstation after lunch or a meeting, they press CTRL+ALT+DEL to unlock the workstation, type in their password and the PC almost immediately goes to the "Saving your settings" window and then stays there until it is powered off completely. The mouse pointer moves, but nothing done on the keyboard has any effect. Nothing in event logs either.

Any clues as to what's going on here?

Screensaver is set to 20mins and monitor standby set to 30mins.

Thanks

James

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

[qpshelp]

Is this happening when they hit enter after typing in their password?

When did this start happening, and can you recall any changes made, or updates installed? check the update log and compare it with a client that isn't having these issues

[Zxian]

What exactly did you do with nLite? Does this happen if the computer has a regular XP install?

[james2210]

It's difficult to say due to the randomness of the problem. nLite was used to slipstream SP2 + the hotfix pack and to also remove some of the XP components such as games and system restore etc. Before we used nLite, we just used to install XP, then put on SP2 then manually download hotfixes. Next we'd sysprep it and make a ghost image for moving between PC's. Using that method, I'd never heard of this happening.

The problem happens immediately after they type their password and hit the enter key. If they are lucky, they see the desktop for about 2 seconds with whatever apps were open before they locked/left the workstation, but more usually, they just see the "saving your settings" message which then stays on screen. I've left one for over 1 hour on this screen before giving it the finger and powering on again.

Thing that is making this a nightmare to trace/fix is the number of factors at play. It's by no means a big problem yet, but I just don't like loose ends. We've so far put this image on over 450 PC's and have only heard of 3 reports of this problem.

Wondering if it could it be....

Something nLite has done?

Another part of the XP build?

Apps that are running when screensaver/powersave activate?

We use WSUS to deploy all XP hotfixes, could a hotfix have tried to reboot during powersave?

Are there some BIOS power management settings at play?

Does their network connection drop?

Any clues/pointers?

Thanks for your interest

James