Start menu freezes every 11 seconds for 30 seconds

[Guest]

Following Problem:

As soon as my computer is connected to a WAN, I have got problems with
opening the start menu. It freezes every 11 seconds for 30 seconds as long as
I move the mouse cursor inside the menu.

I was able to reproduce this problem with every computer (XP SP1 and SP2)
and it disappears as soon as I am back in my LAN (computers are joined to a
domain).

It has something to do with the my documents folder which is redirected via
group policy to an UNC path in our network. If i disable this policy it works
fine in a WAN.

Although I have searched for many hours in the web, I wasn't able to find
any similar problems. But I can't believe that I am the only one who has
found this effekt.

I suppose this has to do with DNS resolution which takes a long time for
searching the UNC path which he naturally can't find in a WAN. Maybe there is
a way to fix this deleay.

Thanks and best regards...

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Following Problem:

As soon as my computer is connected to a WAN, I have got problems
with opening the start menu. It freezes every 11 seconds for 30
seconds as long as I move the mouse cursor inside the menu.

I was able to reproduce this problem with every computer (XP SP1
and SP2) and it disappears as soon as I am back in my LAN
(computers are joined to a domain).

It has something to do with the my documents folder which is
redirected via group policy to an UNC path in our network. If i
disable this policy it works fine in a WAN.

Although I have searched for many hours in the web, I wasn't able
to find any similar problems. But I can't believe that I am the
only one who has found this effekt.

I suppose this has to do with DNS resolution which takes a long
time for searching the UNC path which he naturally can't find in a
WAN. Maybe there is a way to fix this deleay.

Thanks and best regards...

In other words you are wondering why - when the system cannot contact a
system folder because it is redirected to a UNC path that will only be
available when on your private LAN - it might cause a slow down when
accessing parts of the computer that might show that folder? (The start
menu usually has My Documents in it, the desktop can have a shortcut to My
Documents on it, etc...

Someone else may come up with something different (like offline folders or
something) but I think you need to rethink the whole 'redirection' think on
systems that are not going to always be connected to your private LAN (or
where the redirection will function still.)

 

[dMn]

Yes, you are right. Now I understand why it worked with our old "mobility"
client. Because we had activated offline synchronisation. But we decided that
we don't want an offline mode anymore (because we just had problems).

It is almost impossible to change our redirected folders because we want
prevent users to save files on local harddisk and in their user profiles.

Do you have any other ideas, suggestions or workarounds to solve this freeze
problem? I am trying to find another way to solve it. Maybe we have to open
something through the VPN firewall. Do you know what Windows or the start
menu is trying to do? I didn't find anything with a network sniffer, just
some netbios requests....

Regards,

Oli

<CUT>

If you want to keep My Documents the way you have it, then you should
consider removing My Documents from the start menu. Under Properties
for the Start Menu, you can Customize and under the Advanced tab Start
Menu items set My Documents to "Don't display this item". It's not a
perfect fix, but should help the performance hit.

dMn