Slow login to Windows 7 / Windows 2008

Problem:

The user login on a Windows 7 / Windows 2008 system is very slow.

Solution:

The slow login can have different causes:

1. Incorrect DNS configuration / DNS entries

The Windows client should use a UCS domain controller as its DNS server. No servers which no longer exist or which are currently shut down should be defined in the DNS record of the domain and in the DNS SRV records. This can be checked as follows:

host $(dnsdomainname)
host -al $(dnsdomainname) | grep " SRV "

2. Problems with accessing the Windows profile

During login on a Windows client the use profile is downloaded to the client. Problems accessing the profile server can cause delays with the login. The profile path can be checked on a user’s Windows tab or in the command line with this command:

univention-s4search cn=<username> profilePath

If a profile path is set, a check should be made from a Windows client whether the user has access to the corresponding share.

3. Deactivation of the quota login evaluation

During login to a UCS server, the quota is evaluated, settings are made and, if a quota setting is configured but not yet set, it is set during the login. If this results in delays, the evaluation can be deactivated as follows:

ucr set quota/userdefault=no

4. Deactivation of the mounting of home directory shares

During login to a UCS server, a check is performed for whether a home directory share should be mounted automatically. This can lead to delays in large environments in particular and can be deactivated as follows:

ucr set homedir/mount=no

Should these points not be successful, the debug level of the Samba service can be increased and the log output checked for further errors:

ucr set samba/debug/level=4
/etc/init.d/samba4 restart
less /var/log/samba/log.samba

5. In addition the following factors can be checked:

In some cases, it was possible to speed up the login (against a Samba PDC) by enabling the local policy “Specify maximum waiting time for the network if a user has a user profile saved on the server or a remote root directory” and setting it to “0”. Disabling the detection of slow connections should improve the login speed too.

Both settings can be performed using the attached registry file or in the “Group Policy Editor” under “Computer configuration / Administrative templates / User profiles”.

Discussion on the Samba mailing list

Disable_WaitForNetwork_SlowLinkDetect.reg (362 Bytes)

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