Speed up Login

[vanka]

I have a Windows 2003 Small Business Server (I believe that it is the R2 version) and the login process takes from 1 to 2 minutes; actually it's only the "Applying Personal Settings" stage that takes so long. Any ideas on how to speed the process up.

I have installed an earlier version of 2003SBS at a different location and after manually entering in the DNS servers in the clients have 10 to 20 second logins; same with a 2000 Server based setup elsewhere. I tried the DNS trick with this version of 2003SBS and it doesn't work; the login times are identical.

Granted the machine that I currently use as the server is weak (P3 600MHz, 384 MB RAM), but I have the same problem at a couple other sites where the machines can more than handle 2003 Server. I know the problem isn't with the network as I just recently upgraded from an even older server running NT4 (which didn't have this problem) and everything else stayed the same.

Any suggestions or hints would be appreciated.

 

[fattony]

are your profiles fairly large in size?
do you have any login scripts?
are there policies waiting to be applied?
do you have services which are taking to long waiting on dependencies to start first?

you can use userenv logging to go over the logs and check out what may be keeping your login from being faster, altho i must say, on a DC it's normal to see up to 5mins of startup time

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221833
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835302

 

[vanka]

The problem is not with the server (domain controller) starting up slow (I know that the server can take a while to startup), the clients take too long to sign on. The profiles are not too big as I tried logging in with a new profile, plus the NT4 server that was replaced did not have this problem. I have not configured any login scripts.

 

[vanka]

Fixed it, the network had two DNS servers (the Win 2k3 server and the router) and I had entered the router as the sole DNS server. I entered the Win 2k3 Server as the primary DNS server and the router as the secondary and it fixed it. Thanks for your help.

 

[fattony]

good stuff

 

[ravinatikar]

change the host in (c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc)
add
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.2 systemname.servername.com