dhcp interfering with autologon

[Nathan]

We set the computers in our labs to autologon to a remote
profile - this has been working well for us in windows
2000. However, the same setup in XP has a logon error:
"network unreachable - can't find profile." I have traced
it to the machine wanting to autologon before dhcp has
completed getting an ip for the machine. If I turn off
autologon and wait an extra 5 seconds, the machine finds
the remote profile with no problem. I can also avoid the
error by using a static ip address, but switching all our
machines to static ip is not a real option.

My question is: how do I force the dhcp client to complete
before the the machine autologs-on?

Thanks!

 

[allan grossman [mvp]]

Hi, Nathan -

If they're XP Professional machines I'd set a group
policy to force the machines to wait for the network
during logon.

Open the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) and head for
Computer Configuration --> Administrative Templates -->
System --> Logon

Set the policy that says 'Always wait for the network at
computer startup and logon'.

Hope this helps -

 

[Guest]

I followed your advice and changed the group policy
setting. Strangely enough, that one change didn't work by
itself. I managed to get it to work by also going to the
User Profiles section of gpedit and requiring the system to
"wait for the remote profile"; lastly, I had to also change
a registry key for the netlogon service to force it to
depend on dhcp. With those three things set, everything
finally seems to work - thanks for getting me on the right
path.