Users experiencing slowness when they first logon

[tina2]

At first it was one user who whines a lot, but now I am hearing this from others: For about 5 minutes after logging on from home, all applications run very slowly. After a period of time, everything is normal until they log out & back in. This is only hapening to a handful of users, and only on their home machines. I can log on to their sessions with no problems from other machines.

I have tried having them re-install the client, which worked at one point, but only temporarily. Most of the compuers are fairly new Windows 2000 machines that I configured myself. All of the ICA settings are the defaults...

Does anybody have any ideas?
Kristine

 

[chrism0n]

I had this problem with some users. IT turned out it was the bitmap cache was getting large. I had them clear it out, and everything was fine. It could also be something thats running on the client (printer software, NAV, etc..)
But since it happens every time the log on, as opposed to when they first log in after the computer starts up, I would think it could be the cache.
On the client go to Citrix Prog. Neighborhood - Tools - ICA Settings - Bitmap Cache - and clear the cache. Just make sure they are logged off first.

Good Luck

 

[30362]

You may also want to check their profiles, if you are using roaming profiles that are loaded and then deleted from the server with each logon you may find that those profiles are becoming "bloated" with temporary Internet files, cookies and misc. IE related data.

We have 180+ users on 5 servers in a load-balancing scenario, I had to setup several policies regarding cached data since the profiles are stored on a separate server and then copied across the network to the appropriate server's "Documents and Settings" folder when a user logs in. The person who was here before me had no policies whatsoever and some profiles were in excess of 40mb. You can imagine how frustrating a 15-minute login was.

 

[tina2]

Thanks Chrism0n!
It was the Cache files alright. They were HUGE!
Funny, there is no clear documentation about this in the Citrix Website, exept for a reference to the Administrator's guide, which only tells you how the Caching works...

Any idea how to control the file size?

 

[DexX7]

With the newer clients (also the older ones, I believe) you can set the cache size and location from the same window you cleared it (Citrix Prog. Neighborhood - Tools - ICA Settings - Bitmap Cache).

 

[chrism0n]

Yes - DexX7 is right. Where you cleared the cache there is a window where you can change the cache size.
With my users I just turned off Bitmap Caching altogether.

Right click on the ICA connection Icon in Citrix Neighborhood- Properties - Options Tab - uncheck the Use Disk cache for bitmaps. You can just turn it off there.