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Some of the Windows 7 PC’s have been having very slow start-up times, i.e. 10 – 30mins. This only started yesterday morning, I have not changed any of the GPO’s nor have I made any adjustments to the network. It seems to affect random users, for example one office PC was very slow yesterday, today it is acting normal.

The problem is with at start-up it is saying please wait, I have enabled Verbose mode to see what it is actually getting stuck at.

I have found that the PC’s are getting stuck at applying computer settings. So I have moved a PC to a separate OU in AD and applied policies one by one to rule out which GPO is causing the issue. I have found it works for a short period time, next time I restart with the same policy slow speeds. This is even without any Computer Policies applied.

I have each time gpupdate /force to the PC, this again sometimes takes for ever to apply. I have rebooted the DC which hasn’t seemed to of helped.

I have also gone through msconfig and un-ticked any unnecessary programs from start-up. I have disabled anti-virus on both client PC’s and servers. I have also checked the event log to see if anything out of the ordinary is appearing on both the client and servers nothing to exciting in that either.

Applications and Services Logs → Microsoft → Windows → Group Policy → Operational

I have also gone through the system and application logs, nothing in that either.

If I pull the network cable out then restart the PC from a cold boot, this seems to get to the Ctrl + Alt + Del, then plug in the network lead and it is fine at loading profiles. I have also noticed remote desktop sessions to the servers is very slow and creating profiles. If this is all linked in I am not to sure?

I am tearing my hair out with this issue, as it is a bit of a needle in a haystack.

I am wondering if a switch is jabbering or is out of time somewhere, I am going to reboot the switches and servers tonight see if that cures it.

Any extra ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks

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2

You need to set all logon\startup scripts to execute simultaneously

3

Thanks for your reply, but I cant seem to find where to do that.

I have followed the instructions on the link, but cant see it?

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Run rsop.msc and report back what you have for GPO’s. I’m assuming you might have folder redirection enabled which can cause delays for users logging on.

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Thanks for your reply,

We do use folder re-direction, but this applies at logon not at start-up. I have checked through rsop.msc, I can’t seem to find any errors within that either?

thanks

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Do you have any preferences set in Group Policy to map network drives, printers, etc?

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DNS issues maybe? Try removing the laptop from the domain then adding it back in. Also make sure that your DHCP is serving up the right DNS servers and there are no issues in the actual DNS services.

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8

I was thinking maybe DNS was playing up, as when a PC first turns on, it should only see GPO’s, DNS & DHCP and talking via switching.

I have checked both DNS and DHCP they seem to be behaving ok. I don’t have any abnormal GPO’s being applied, but what doesn’t make any sense it is happening to random computers. It will sometimes happen and sometimes not?

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Have you checked the logs on the server to see if there are any DNS issues? It certainly sounds like some weird DNS problem.

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What are you seeing on the machine in its Event Viewer? When I’ve seen things like this in the past, it was due to a GPO that it didn’t like or have access to the resource for whatever reason. Thus, it would have to time out before it would move on. It ended up being one simple GPO that when I stopped applying it took boot times from 15 minutes to 2 minutes in Windows XP, etc.

Run gpresult /h results.html from a command prompt as an admin or with elevated privileges and look at the resulting file to see if that offers more information.

11

What AV are you running?

Can you remove one of the computers from the AV cycle completely and see what happens? i.e don’t just disable it, uninstall it

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thanks for your help I did seem to solve the problem, I restarted all of the servers and core switch, this has seem to of solved the problem, weird :slight_smile:

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Well it looks like the problem has returned today. It was fine up until today.

Applying computer settings > 45 Seconds

Applying registry settings > 3mins

Applying script policy - 2mins

Applying group policy printers policy > 3mins

CTRL + ALT + DEL = around 8mins 45secs

Applying user settings > 1min

Applying folder re=direction 15secs

Desktop

TOTAL = around 10mins

Nothing has changed since the begging of the week, except for it is Windows update week, I don’t know if all of the PC’s are trying to hog the network with Windows updates?

It is seeming to affect random people like before, one user can log on as normal other people are having the same issue as what I am.

I have tried all of the above tricks, nothing has seemed to work so far. I am wondering if it is just sheer traffic on the network? The servers performance seems ok, nothing out of the ordinary. Also when I am finally logged in I can navigate network drives with no speed issues and the internet speed is loading fairly quickly.

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What is even stranger is I just rebooted my PC, this time around I was logged in on my desktop sub 1min :confused:

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I am still no closer to finding out what is causing this, but I think it is a DNS problem. As once you are logged in it perfectly fine, removing the network lead the PC boots fine. But no events show up in event log with DNS problems, so this is proving very hard to troubleshoot.

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Within DNS manager I have came across clear cache, I am a bit wary of doing this as I don’t know what knock on affects this will do clearing the cache?

Clearing_DNS_Cache.jpg

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Wibok,

I know this conversation has been dead for a while but my situation sounds a bit like yours. I work in a school district and saw this in a few computer labs. After months of on and off research and trials I think we have a solution. This may not be what is causing your problem but it is worth looking into. In our case it seems like WMI functionality was our problem.

It seems like a high amount of traffic on these machines (multiple different users logging in everyday) was causing a WBEM repository folder file to bloat and become corrupt. It is located in root\Windows\System32\WBEM\Repository. Usually we would see a file called corrupted.rec or something like it. Examining the repository folder size would usually yield over 400mb’s which was higher than recommended. So what we assumed was happening was that when the machine was starting up, winmgmt was parsing this file and until it finished you wouldn’t get to ctrl-alt-del. Now as you noticed unplugging the network cable bypassed this. Also turning off services like NETLOGON would do the same (unfortunately this was just a temporary band aid).

What worked for us was blowing out the repository folder and rebuilding it. Which as you can guess is not advised by MS.

This also seems to be a temporary solution as multiple users a day will still log into these machines and that file will build again. I am beginning to read about RSoP. It is beyond my understanding but the gist of it is that every user that logs into the machine with RSoP active will cause an addition to the Repository files causing it to build. I don’t know the repercussions of turning off RSoP yet but hopefully checking the repository folder size may lead you to a solution. I believe Microsoft noted that the repository size should only be under 200 mb but don’t quote me on that. A rebuild on the repository got it’s size down to 15mb’s on average and no more please wait problems.

MS offers WMI hotfixes but I have yet to feel comfortable that they did anything for us when we did apply them in a few instances.

I apologize if most of my comment is vague, I am a relatively new technician so I don’t have a great grasp on what all of these acronyms actually do but do know what they are affecting haha.

Hope that helps

-Jeff

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Hi Jeff,

Thanks very much for your response, very detailed and informative. I did look at this but I didn’t want to risk causing more damage by tampering with these sort of bits as it can have a knock on affect. I have managed to solve the issue in the end. I turned on Verbose mode and applied it to the all the clients so instead of saying “please wait” it will tell you actually what it is doing, for example deploying printers or applying computer settings etc. In the end what it was as a process of elimination was a switch was jabbering, so I replaced it with the same model. My first instance was I thought it was one of the DC’s playing up, not being synchronised, but once I replaced the switch and restarted all of the domain controllers it was happy again. I have no idea why this happened or what caused it to suddenly happen.

thanks for your help though

Mike

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Ah yes…I got ahead of myself yesterday and got excited haha. I do now remember reading that you did say the issue resolved itself after changing out the switches. Well I’m glad everything worked out!

Thanks,

Jeff

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I finally figured this out after months of seeing this bug in a domain environment. Set Network Location Awareness service to automatic (delayed start) and reboot. Now you should be able to login without “please wait” over hardwire.

Ryan - MCITP Windows 7 Enterprise

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