SLLLLLOOOOWWW Netware login

[satch]

We WERE using client 4.81 for W2K, then our admin, acting on a reccomendation from Novell, upgraded to 4.83. This change has taken a login measuring seconds and made it a PAINFULLY slow process of minutes, often with errors, and having to re-enter the username/password.

This is a case of the fix being FAR worse than the problem.

Does anyone still have a copy of the 4.81 client?

Our admin also went and deleted the source files, and Novell DOES NOT offer anything but 4.83 that I have been able to find.

Thanks
Ken

 

[satch]

AS AN UPDATE:

I installed the kindly supplied 4.80 client (THANKS AGAIN jscottd) on a w2k machine, and it was like turbo-charging that puppy!

No other changes other than to remove the 4.83 client and install the 4.80 client. Which leads to the question: "what's different here?"

Satch

PS thank you to all theh posters who helped, and I still have to follow-up on their advise... Someone please explain to me why I continue to torture myself like this....

 

[dvannoy]

File Caching and burst mode should be OFF.. also are you running Dual processors?? I had this problem just about a month ago. has anything got changed?? service pack update etc..this is very important.. if someone made changes to your server you must know. i thought the same thing, i thought it was my client..it's not the client, something got changed?? are you running NWASPI?? how is your directory walking once you get in the server?? can you access files fast or is that slow as well?

 

[satch]

Hi all!

First off, I wish to thank EVERYONE who supplied ideas/hints/clues and links.This has been a BUSY thread, and attracted a lot of attention.

LATEST UPDATE:
I applied the complete registry mods as suggested/supplied at

http://www.ithowto.com/novell/clientspeed.htm

and tried several other tweaks. I had the latest SP for 4.83, and SP3 on the winblows machines.

2 computers, side by each, 1 with 4.83, other with 4.80.
4.80 client was over 1 minute faster from boot to desktop. These are IDENTICAL machines in all respects.
P4-1..6Ghz, 256Mb ram 30Gb hdds

INTERESTING THINGS I DISCOVERED:
All these machines were built from a "ghost" image supplied by a co-worker. After initial distribution, I found and disabled the following:

1)msclient for msnetworks

2)file & print sharing

3)netbeui

4)IPX (all servers are 5.2 or better)
This sped up the boot process substantially, but was still minutes long.

5)W2K has auto-update feature, which was active in this config. Disabling this service took 20-30 secs offpre-NWclient boot time.

6)"hidden" in the services was DEEPFREEZE. This is a program that prevents end users and virii from installing software, and making system and file changes. The program itself was not visible anywhere else. This is a "bug" that occurs when "ghosting" the image to other computers. The co-worker who supplied the image had not known of this, and had not informed me that DEEPFREEZE was installed and sort of half active. I could install software and make system changes, and they would stick, but the computer was choking at the point where the DEEPFREEZE service was loading.
Once I un-installed DEEEPFREEZE, the computers where faster BY MINUTES, I was down to ~30 seconds from start to Novell login.

7) I did not configure the server for this particular group of computers, and when I finally got the sysadmin who built to sit down and look closer, it turns out that the licences weren't properly activated, and while the users were local to the server, and authenticating to the tree, they were getting the licences from another server across a WAN link.
This fix sped up the Netware login considerably

*I dont feel too bad about missing this, because we had a NOVELL technician look into this while dealing with another issue on this server, and he missed it too.

AT THE END OF IT ALL:
All of the computers are MUCH faster from boot to desktop, but NWclient 4.80, IS STILL ~20 seconds faster after entering username/password than 4.83. This seems to also be affected by network traffic. When network is very busy, the time difference increases.

Thanks again to everyone!
Satch Someone please explain to me why I continue to torture myself like this....