Working offline on laptop - slow logon

[Guest]

I hope this is posted in somewhat right place.

I work at a University College. We have Windows XP clients, Windows 2003
servers and use AD. Many users has laptops, and wish to work offline (at home
and on travels). We let them log on to their laptops offline with AD's cached
credentials, and a copy/cache of the server profile locally.

They have roaming profiles, redirected My documents etc, and I have enabled
Offline files (otherwise they get an error message regarding no rights to
their "My Documents, Desktop etc).

We have given up on using Offline Files for synchronising so far (too many
unknown factors). We let them use MS SyncToy, for now.

So, my question:
Why is the local logon so slooow (2 min vs 10 sec) when their wireless
network is enabled, and otherwise not ?

I appreciate any help.

 

[MPerrault]

I hope this is posted in somewhat right place.

I work at a University College. We have Windows XP clients, Windows 2003
servers and use AD. Many users has laptops, and wish to work offline (at home
and on travels). We let them log on to their laptops offline with AD's cached
credentials, and a copy/cache of the server profile locally.

They haveroaming profiles, redirected My documents etc, and I have enabled
Offline files (otherwise they get an error message regarding no rights to
their "My Documents, Desktop etc).

We have given up on using Offline Files for synchronising so far (too many
unknown factors). We let them use MS SyncToy, for now.

So, my question:
Why is the local logon so slooow (2 min vs 10 sec) when their wireless
network is enabled, and otherwise not ?

I appreciate any help.

There may be something in the original online gpo that is causing
this. take a look at this:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...626c-463e-9812-fa46e85c787b1033.mspx?mfr=true

there is also this:

This is caused by the asyncronous loading of networking during the
boot up process. This speeds up the login process in a stand-alone
workstation by allowing the user to log in with cached logon
credentials before the network is fully ready.

To disable this "feature" and restore your domain logons to their
normal speed, open the MMC and add the group policy snap-in. Under
Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->System-->Logon,
change "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" to
ENABLED.

This can be fed to clients via a group policy from a Windows 2000
server by upgrading the standard policy template with the XP policy
template. Since this is an XP only command, non-XP systems will
ignore it in a domain distributed group policy.

you may want to change it to "disabled" for offline users.

hope these help,

Michael P. Perrault
MCSE, CCNA, A+, MBA
Senior Systems Engineer,
ScriptLogic Corporation

(e-mail address removed)
www.scriptlogic.com

 

[Guest]

There may be something in the original online gpo that is causing
this. take a look at this:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...626c-463e-9812-fa46e85c787b1033.mspx?mfr=true

there is also this:

This is caused by the asyncronous loading of networking during the
boot up process. This speeds up the login process in a stand-alone
workstation by allowing the user to log in with cached logon
credentials before the network is fully ready.

To disable this "feature" and restore your domain logons to their
normal speed, open the MMC and add the group policy snap-in. Under
Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->System-->Logon,
change "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" to
ENABLED.

This can be fed to clients via a group policy from a Windows 2000
server by upgrading the standard policy template with the XP policy
template. Since this is an XP only command, non-XP systems will
ignore it in a domain distributed group policy.

you may want to change it to "disabled" for offline users.

hope these help,

Michael P. Perrault
MCSE, CCNA, A+, MBA
Senior Systems Engineer,
ScriptLogic Corporation

(e-mail address removed)
www.scriptlogic.com

Thanks for your answer Mr. Perrault.

I see now that another post is _very_ similar to mine:
Subject: Really really slow unless connected to the office LAN 1/12/2007
8:59 AM PST
Like he says: "It almost seems like the laptop is attempting to contact the
domain
resources for something, although I cannot find what."

--
We have only Windows XP clients here, and in this case it conserns the
laptops, so I tried to disable the GPO you mentioned. Unfortunately, it made
no difference in our case.

So, everything is fine if the wireless card is not active, while starting up
and logging in. Otherwise not (5-6 min booting, and 2-3 min login). Seems to
me there must be some kind of too long timeout setting regarding the wireless
vs the Domain login somewhere.

Your link contains good information, and I will try some more of those GPO
settings, and report back. Thanks again.