Windows 7 Pro Login Issues on Server 2003

[prewebit]

I am running a Windows Server 2003 in a school with 15 PCs running Win7 Pro and 1 PC still running XP Pro (changing to 7 soon!) and despite a few teething problems, the system has been running fine for several months. I am now starting to see issues with login times on the PCs, if I login as domain Administrator, it flies through the login process, but using any of other logins from AD, login time is drastically increased, in one instance to over an hour, but mostly 15-20 minutes! There are no complicated login scripts, fairly simple setup.

I have seen various other posts about DNS settings need changing etc. but don't know how to push this out (the server has no reverse lookup zones, only forward) and when manually changing the DNS server settings (following a ipconfig /flushdns) on the network adapter on one of the PCs, it struggled to logon, and 2 hours later, I still don't think it has logged in.

Is anyone able to shed any light on this, am more than happy to give more information if needed, I just thought I would give the simplest explanation first.

Thanks in advance
Pete (prewebit)

 

[DrB0b]

My fault, I was going off of my remoted 08 and forgot they weren't 03 anymore.

Back to the previous question then, when was the last time you restarted the entire server?

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[prewebit]

Earlier this week, there were some Windows Updates, it is waiting to be restarted following a few more today. Having restarted all of the services again this afternoon, do you think that would be beneficial?

 

[DrB0b]

I know you inherited this system, but I would be very careful with just blindly allowing updates to be run. I would create a VM and allow it to update and see if it breaks anything, although server 03 I think still has the system restore feature.

Speaking of these things..... was there an AD/DNS update pushed around the time you started noticing the issue? PS, did you try the manual DNS in the workstations?

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[prewebit]

The only recent updates since this has started happening is KB 2607712 and 2570791, which having just looked, was a Cumulative Time Zone Update, which if I look at the EventID website you sent me, the first comment relates to an issue with a badly configured Windows Time Service - I've looked into the Registry and the NTPClient doesn't exist or the 'Enabled' key, so that can't be it.

I'm not on site so I will have to go in next week and sort out the DNS pointing.

 

[prewebit]

Been a week or two and I think the issue may well be resolved. Having followed Microsoft's advice for creating a new roaming user profile on Server 2003, I created a new user and was unable to copy the profile to the server (a known issue across many forums) until I followed some advice about using Windows Enabler to activate the facility. This worked, and the roaming profile is now working across the machines - although I am having to go to each of the 12 machines to customise the desktop, but that's ok! I think that's a Server 2003/Win7 glitch anyway, judging by some of the forum posts I've read elsewhere.

Either way, the login time on the new user was normal - around 8-10 seconds. I got them to test this in a lesson and all were happy! So I am going to do this for the other users and see how we go. Thanks for the help DrB0b, you've made me see some things in a new light!

 

[DrB0b]

Glad you got it figured out and thanks for posting how you ultimately fixed it!

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...