Troubleshooting strange login script problems

[MasterRacker]

I have a login script that uses a freeware MemberOf utility to map a couple of drives based on specific AD group membership. [small](

http://www.joeware.net/freetools/tools/memberof/index.htm

)[/small] Most of the time, everything works perfectly, however I have seen certain users where the memberof check will fail. Running the script in a command window to see the output, I would see a dsquery error stating the domain is not available (I don't have the exact error text.) This only happens for certain users and it doesn't happen even to them repeatably.

Another part of the script simply copies a shortcut from the netlogon share to the %userprofile%\Desktop folder. I found out today that once in a while this fails for at least one user with a "Access denied" error. In her case she rebooted, it failed again, then I ran the script from a cmd window, watched it fail, logged her out and back in and it ran perfectly.

We are a single Windows 2003 AD domain running just TCP/IP. How do I find intermittent issues like this?

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[Zelandakh]

Wow, getting to help Jeff - never thought I'd see that!

Do you have more than 1 GC? Are you seeing latency? I'd look at domain controller performance here as I'd guess this is down to a time delay in the response that causes the client to assume a "no response".

 

[58sniper]

Using a freeware version instead of the Microsoft version? Any reason why you're not using vbs to do it?

I'm with Zelandakh - what's going on there? I'd also ratchet up auditing for security logs and see what's showing up there.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[MasterRacker]

As I recall, the Microsoft version couldn't recurse through nested groups. (Of course, I could be wrong or just braindead.) I'm pretty weak with VBS which is one reason I'm not using that and overall, it's a pretty simple login script.

I only have 2 DCs. Since netlogon replicates, of necessity I had to pick one to copy the shortcut from, no matter which is serving the script.

The whole thing is funky enough that I would like to run some kind of AD "health check", but don't know how to proceed.

(Zel, you give me [small]way[/small] too much credit ;-) )

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[58sniper]

dcdiag and netdiag are the first places to look when concerned about AD health.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[acl03]

I have seen VB Scripts (probably from marcdmac)that will map drives based on group. One of them handled nested groups. (with recursive searches, I think).



Thanks,
Andrew

Hard work often pays off over time, but procrastination pays off right now!

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

here is what I use, but there are other ways I have found; although I have not tested it to see if it is recursive for nested groups

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=202816&messageID=2110664

For Each group In arrGroups
If group = "GroupName" Then
cNetwork.MapNetworkDrive "I:", "\\servername\sharename"
End If

________________________________________
Achieving a perception of high intelligence level can only be limited by your manipulation skills of the Google algorithm!

 

[tfg13]

acl03,
I believe you are correct. I've seen/used most of Mark's stuff as well, and this sounds familiar. Started looking over at the VBScript forum, and found some of Mark's FAQs that may assist:

faq329-5798

 

[acl03]

This is the post of Mark's that I was thinking of. It doesn't do drivemappings, but it could easily be modified to do so.

It recursively lists group members.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1348699&page=5

Thanks,
Andrew

Hard work often pays off over time, but procrastination pays off right now!

 

[MasterRacker]

So right away Zelandakh mentions possible latency and then looking through Mark's script I see a built in delay in at least one spot. I think timing may be the underlying issue.

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]