W2K Server Slow Logon 1

[timsayles1]

I just installed a Windows 2000 Server with about 15 users. The server is taking an extremely long time to logon the users. It will stay on applying policies, etc for 5-10 mins.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! This is my first production server install!!

 

[GlenJohnson]

Make sure you install SP2 for the server(I don't trust SP3, but if this is a fresh install, you may have it already), install all the hotfixes except the IIS security rollup package, then try it. Also check your log files for any errors. Good Luck Glen A. Johnson
Johnson Computer Consulting
MCP W2K
glen@johnsoncomputers.us



"Uniformity is death, diversity is life."
Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-1876); Russian writer and revolutionary.

 

[timsayles1]

The windows update site only has SP3.

 

[jamesch]

I’ve had the same problem, but my server would take about 1 hour to full boot into the desktop. What I did was go through the event view with a fine toothcomb, and see if any errors are in there, and corrected it. Second What about DNS? I think on my deal is that I did some tweaking on my DNS and services and my server came up faster. What about your DNS, is it AD integrated, or on a stand-alone? What about services, try using services that you only need, also use only windows programs that you only need to use now, i.e. clustering services not needed now but installed, uninstall it! AD works off of DNS make sure this is working, AD will have problems if DNS is not working, try NSLOOKUP and other tools for DNS. Get your DNS working first!

I hope this helps!


Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
USAF

 

[timsayles1]

I am installing SP3. .... scary scary.

What would cause the slow login, just a bug or is something not setup correctly?

 

[timsayles1]

I think the DNS might be the problem, but I just cannot seem to get a handle on it.

 

[GlenJohnson]

Any error messages? Glen A. Johnson
Johnson Computer Consulting
MCP W2K
glen@johnsoncomputers.us



"Uniformity is death, diversity is life."
Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-1876); Russian writer and revolutionary.

 

[timsayles1]

only dns errors in the logs are from three days ago when I set ip up and the domain name was not registered yet.

 

[vicroz]

What policies are you pushing down to the clients?
Your delay may be during policy application or possibly while mapping drives? If you are mapping drives are they all valid? Are you using roaming profiles? How big are your user profiles? Have you looked at Task Manager (sort by Process and CPU) on the console while the issue is occuring?

Go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Winlogon and check the value and path for Userinit and for Shell. Shell should equal explorer.exe. make sure you do not have an additional copy of explorer in system32 as Userinit will look where it lives first.

In (very) simplistic terms, this is what occurs during your logon process, it is simply a matter of determing where in the process you are slowing down. You SAS (Ctrl+Alt+Del), Winlogon calls the GINA (default msgina) to obtain a username and password, which it passes to lsass.exe for authentication. If authenticated, Winlogon then looks at the two values I gave you in the previous paragraph and runs them. Userinit loads the user profile, and of course the Shell value is your desktop (the last thing launched)...

It is important to determine whether the logon process is slow, or whether the slowness is simply a symptom of possibly high CPU util by other users or the system?

Also if you are mapping drives, make sure they are valid.
If you are pushing down poilicies, make sure they are valid and they are being applied successfully (use gpedit from the reskit).

Verify that your logon scripts are correct and functional.

Create a plain jane user and see if they experience the same delay.

hth

V.

 

[SoundDoctor]

Ran into a similar issue not long ago on a customers 2000 server. The domain name of the network was abc.local, but the forward lookup zone was for abc.com.
through the workstation event log, the active directory server was not available.
Blew away the forward lookup zone for abc.com, created a new zone for abc.local, and made sure to enter the server server.abc.com as a blank host (leave parent blank) in the zone pointing to itself.

Workstation slow logon gone.

Hope this Helps!

 

[timsayles1]

OK, SP3 now installed. I made the DNS adjustments as suggested. Now, I have a w2k and a Win98 machine that cannot see the network drives (they can logon).

Error message" \\server2000 is not accessible, the network path was not found"

Thank you all!

 

[timsayles1]

I think I have roaming profiles enabled, that is why it is taking so long. How do I disable that?