Mapped drives causing slow logon

Do you have anything running a samba or Linux based program? If so reboot it. Cdrom tower, NAS web app server anything that the profile is creating a share... Without going into details I have an HP CDROM tower running samba as a Share. Took me three weeks and an accident to figure it out. Looking at your other post Voodoo may work.

No samba or linux.
Problem is common on this machine to any profile with network drives mapped.

I probably got lucky

Are all mapped drives connecting. We had a similar problem where disconnected mapped drives were still trying to connect and slowing PC down. Deleted the disconnected mapped drive and hey presto all worked OK.

My apologies I think you have already deleted the mapped drives, I diddnt look at your origional link before answering..Doh!

I have heard that persistant connections can cause slow logins when they are connected to a downlevel computer.(i.e if you have XP and the mapped drives are on Win2K or NT perhaps).  If you have persistant connections try disconnecting them and set them up with a login script when the user logs in.

Regards

When I finally get logged in, the two network drives are not connected (red "X"), but they connect immediately when clicked on after logon.  Seems obvious that trying to connect them is the problem with the long login....but why won't they connect?

An interesting problem... I found this wether it'll help I dont know
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/msnetreb.html
Try the quick logon

Cheers
G

Thanks G, but the link is about Win98 and I don't see anything that applies here.

I had a similar problem.  It is while trying to authenticate the connection you are geeting the delay.  Disconnect the drives and map them in a logon script and you may well find they connect faster.

Regards

DenisBS

I think that its true that  sometimes XP may take a while to finish booting up because its try to authenticate the connection.

To create a local Logon Scripts in Windows XP here is the steps...
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/wxpplogs.html

Geng 001 - JConchie has already verified thta it is a local logon ( see the other half of hte thread in the other section)  I am strongly tempted to believe that it is the mapped network drives, and here is why (the following is also on the other half of this thread)

************************

This comment probably goes on the Network TA sid eof this discussion, but I'm goig to drop it here for you guys to chew on.

I have a network wide issue that seems related.  Mapped Drives.  Users consist of about 25 XP Pro boxes and 4 98 boxes, server are 3 2003 and 1 2000, the "pdc" is a 2003 box.

Lat Tuesday (th 18'th) at about noon local, network response came to a near grinding halt for anythign that touched a mapped drive.  This includes opening up widows explorer, the more mapped drives the worse the respose.  It has reached the point where applications will not run due to time out, or may take as long at "10 minutes" for the user to log-in to the particular app.  These processes were nearly instant prior to last Tuesday.

We checked the drives, patched up all the servers and making the rounds on the wrokstations, monitored the network load (more or less non existent most of the time, perhaps as much as 10% for limited times and occasional spikes) using the 3COM Network Supervosor and watching the ports on the switches and the agrigate load for hte switches  ( would love some suggestions on good network monitoring apps)

The 2 reasons that I post this info here are :

1) Like JConchie, this started up out of the blue

2) Like JConchie, this involves mapped network drives (If I take my local machine and unmapp all drives and then reboot, I can get normal response time out of Windows Explorer, remapp the drives 1 by 1, and with the addition of each mapped drive, the respose time to open ANY drive/folder gets longer and longer, and running some particular apps becomes an effort in futility.

2a) Unlike this issue, mine effects the entire network, and all users

I wanted to add this as food for thought from the network side of this issue as there is something going on that has so far not been discovered.

I did go intot he servers and add the TcpDelAckTicks and Tcp AckFrequency keys to the 2000/2003 servers as suggested in several other posts, and this has helpped browsing and general response just a little - but this seems to be a reg hack on the server and not the workstation.

I have not played aroudn with the profiles of any users since this effected all users at the same time.

I don't know if JCounchie has the following condition or not, but we have a VAN - that is to say that our WAN is provided over leased service from the local broadband provider.  I have not called them to see if anythign that they have done cold have beenthe cause - regular internet browsing/downloading - same provider, different IP paths, is uneffected.

I hope that this helps with the discusion and does not confuse it further.

Thanks
 

********

Any ideas about why the mapped drives wold cause this sort of behavior will probably be more in the correct direction.

JConchie created a new profice for the user on the particular Laptop and then did some logon tests with and with out  the mapped drives being mapped.  The addition of mapped drives to ANY profile on the laptop recreates his problem.

The twist in mine is that logon times did not suddenly increase, but browse times, and general response times to go get a fie from a mapped drive suddenly increased.

I suspect that if we find a solution to JConchie's issue, I will find a solution to mine at the same time.  I have a gut feeling that they are closely related.

JConchie - can you verify the makeup of your servers?  (all 2003, all 2000, mixed, nt4.0 ?)  Does this slow logon happen for any other pc's on the network - do any othe machines use the mapped drives?  ( I assume the answer is yes, but am going to ask the obvious question anyway)

In your case, you have a user on a laptop with slow logon - in my case I have multiple users accessing an application that runs across a mapped drive and the application logon is slow (a user just walked in and told me again that it took "about 10 minutes" to logon, but now that he's in it is working, and slowly getting faster)  The applications in particular are built on FoxPro, though others are also effected  - it takes for ever to establish the connection to the mapped drive then things move along sluggishly until the user tries to run the app - then forget it.

I just timed a few things - added a mapped drive (that makes 2 for me + 2 drives added via logon script with the /persistent:no switch) and the time to access any mapped drive went up by a few seconds on overage - then I drilled into one drive, grabbed a top level folder (at the share level) and opened that (it contained 1 file) the hourglass spent over 40 seconds on my explorer window.  On average it takes about 8 seconds for the explorer window/application to open and completely paint the window, it hangs at the mapped drives - this is actually an improvement since the addition of hte regestry hacks on the servers (see above).  If I take out hte network mapped drives, then the browse times are nearly instantaneous o nthe local machine, even if it's attached to the network.

Something in this and in JConchie's issue is the same.

Thanks

This is probably a server issue.  It is known that if a workstation has problems getting information about a mapped network drive this will slow down the building of the dialog box while the workstation waits from a response from the server.  A good way to demonstrate this is to map a drive to a CD ROM on a remote workstation and remove the disc from the CD ROM.  Any attempt  to explore the network will be  slow as the OS waits for the info about the CD ROM so it can build the Dialog box. Remove the mapping to the CD ROM and things revert to normal.

I would suggets the way forward for this problem would be to monitor the traffic between the servers and workstation  to see if there is a pause whilst the workstation waits for a response from the server.  If this is so then attention will have to turn to the server to find out why it is not reponding in a timely fasion.

Regards

DenisBS

What tools would you suggest to use to monitor the traffic?  You have summed it up fairly well, removing the mapped drives gets rid of the lag in the building of hte dialog box (I've done the other thing in the past...no fun)

Would this have anythign to do withthe logon issue that JConchie is experiencing, or is your guess that they are one and the same?

there is a good network monitoring tool at

www.ethereal.com

You try this to capture data between the logon server and the client.

I am not convinced the Jconchie's problem is related.  The problem described by Jconchie seems to be of slow opening of an application from a network share. I had something similar just after we upgraded to Win2k from NT workstation and it disappeared when we upgraded the backbone to Gigabit Ethernet, so it may be something to do with bandwidth.

Regards

DenisBS

Denis.....I have my doubts about the bandwidth idea....if that was the case, I would expect to see the same behavior (login delay jumps from 10 sec. to 1 min 45 sec) in every machine on the lan with mapped drives......which is not at all the case....the problem is particular to this single laptop.

Apologies I am losing track of names

For Jconchie read Adm Tronthor problem being possibly Bandwidth related

I think your problem (JConchie) is to do with slow server reponse authenticating the mapped drives

Regards

DenisBS

JConchie - this only happens with the one single machine?  Are any of the others XP or all some other OS?  I just checked back over both threads, and this info is not included.

So, is the laptop the ONLY XP box in the mix, or are others also XP?

Are your servers all one flavor as well?

DenisBS  - sorry for confusion on names

I've still got the mapped/unmapped drives and logon issues, but I found a new twist in my issue that I hope is unrelated but I have to fix first... ( - not bandwith, but throughput - I may have to open a new question for that if I can't find it, it doesn't belong in this discussion - atleast I don't think so, let's keep going after the logon time and the mapped drives)

What are the primary reasons that a server will have a problem authenticating mapped drives??

If this is affecting only 1 machine it seems to me that we have a configuration issue here.

Just this laptop....have other XP machines on the lan......DCs are all W2K....one advanced and three standard.

Hi,

Have checked your DNS settings.  XP uses DNS and if your DNS is resolving externally before internally this would cause a delay in resovling the share name.  Make sure the client is pointing to a DNS server which resovles the local network first.

Regards

DenisBS

Denis,
appreciate the thought, but this is not a DNS issue........nothing wrong with our dns server.....or entries..and it is internal......if it was a dns issue:

                         a) the machine would not be finding a DC to login....not the case here....and also would not be able to find the servers to which mapped drives are pointed...again, not the case here.

                          b) if it was a DNS issue, it would be having the same effect on every machine on the Lan.

                         

Hi,

Apologies,  I meant you to check the DNS settings on the client and ensure the domain DNS server was top of the list, or the only entry in the list.

If the client is having difficulties with DNS it will wait for a fairly long time out period and then fallback to WINS for name resolution.  This has been known to cause slow logons.

Regards

DenisBS

Thanks Denis, but this is a very specific correlation between having mapped drives on the machine and login time....see above.

Yes This is what is so puzzling.

If I can Summarize

You are logging on to a laptop with XP O/s
The regular user normally logs in to the local machine.

You have tried logging in with the PC connected to the network and with the PC not connected to the network and the logon times are the same.

The machine is a member of a Domain

You are mapping two drives which have been mapped using the Map a network Drive Wizard and set to restore the connection when you log on.

The logon server is a W2K server running active directory.

There are several issues coming into play here.

If you are looging in locally then it may be possible that at the time the OS is attempting to reconnect the drives, The user may not be authenticated on the network.  Thiis can happen because the logon process is asynchronous and  one task doesn't necessarily wait for another to complete.

For the same reason the  local computer may not have access to the DNS server.  This will cause it to be unable to resovle the drive mapping.

It might be worth a try to create a batch file to connect the drives and get this to run immediately after the logon process is complete and see it this makes any improvement

regards

DenisBS

"The regular user normally logs in to the local machine."  Nope, he normally logs into the domain, both on the lan, and on the road...through high speed access and wireless.

Apologies.

I understood this to be case  from the  post by Adm Tronthor 05/24/2004 03:13PM BST

Geng 001 - JConchie has already verified thta it is a local logon ( see the other half of hte thread in the other section)  I am strongly tempted to believe that it is the mapped network drives, and here is why (the following is also on the other half of this thread)

This doesn't invalidate the comments in my post.  It is worth trying the batch file just to eliminate the possibilty of trying to make the connection before everthing is ready.

Regards

DenisBS

Have just posted the following in community support....many thanks to all who tried to find a solution here.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_20993754.html

                                                  and

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Networking/Microsoft_Network/Q_20994061.html

are related questions about the same issue.......to which no solutions have been found....I'm using a work-around of my own devising.....please close and delete.

Hi,

I would appreciate knowing the workaround JConchie is using.  If this is a viable workaround it may be useful for others.  Also we are starting to use XP here so it may be something which I will face in due course.

Regards

DenisBS

Denis,
Sorry I mentioned this in the related question, but not here.....rather than mapping drives to the shares, I used \\servername in the run command and then right-clicked on the appropriate directory and used the "send to desktop (create shortcut)" command.  The shortcut (unlike a mapped drive, which attempts to re-connect at login) is only activated when the user actually clicks on the desktop icon, so it does not interfer with login time.  The downside is that when the user wants to save a file from within an app, the shortcut does not show up as a network drive would, and in the "Save as" window, the user must navigate all the way through the "My network places" file tree to get to the directory he/she wants to save the file in.

Thanks JConchie

I personally would have given the batch file a try as it would avoid the user having to do excessive navigation if it succeeded.  The way I normally do this is to create a batch file to start the program.

The first line of the batch file maps the drive.
The second line is the command to start the program.
The last line disconnects the drive .

for example  

run access.bat

net use f: \\server\share
c:\program files\office\msaccess.exe
net use f: /delete

The desktop shortcut calls the batch file, which maps the drive and then starts the program.  When the user exits the program the batch file disconnects the drive.

Regards

DenisDB

Is the DNS server setting on the laptop pointing to a Win2K/2K3 Server?  XP needs to point to an MS DNS server on Domain login to avoid long delays.

etm030

Thanks for your input....it's appreciated......but DNS is up and running just fine.......and is one of the rock-bottom basics that any good network admin......that's me......double-checks before looking for help.  ;-)      

roger, that.

In Windows Explorer Tools|Folder Options are you using "Show common tasks in folders" or "Use Classic Windows folders"?  I find that XP networking runs into far fewer hitches when Classic folders is used, especially related to mapped drives.

yup, have had the same experience....and use Classic anyway just because I'm old-fashioned.............

OK, one more stab in the dark and I'll leave this alone.  :)

You mentioned in one of these threads that CEO was playing with a USB drive right before this happened, but he couldn't get it to work.  It is my experience that when that happens it is because those devices invariably attempt to take drive letters like E: or F: and there is a conflict with a netowk drive mapping.  Have you checked Disk Management to see if there is still an entry for the USB device hanging around?

I've never rebooted a PC with a conflicting setting still in place, but imagine a long timeout might occur if the OS tries to map to a letter that the USB device is trying to reserve.

Good thought....but again, an obvious thing for me to check early on in the process....you have the makings of a good troubleshooter  :-)

This is so a DNS issue. but you could have an issue with a local host file, or a conflicting dns entry.

Also do you have wins turned on?

Scott Wiseman

From what I've read in all these posts and what I've experienced with my own networks in the past...., Scott659 has mentioned the right path....

Verify DNS issues,
Verify local host and lmhost files,

I guarantee you...., your problem lies here!

Have a nice day!

Guys, everybody keeps coming back to address resolution, which as all of you and I know, is at the root of many issues.....but in this case, it just ain't so,   I am running DNS, WINS and I have an lmhost file on the machine....all settings are exactly the same, repeat, exactly the same as machines that do not experience this problem......and all settings are correct.  The machine can ping, by name, as well as IP, the servers hosting the network drives whose mapping is causing the startup delay....There is no bandwidth problem......I agree, it is a connectivity issue..........but it is *not* an address resolution problem..........

Well..., here's what I would try then....

Remove the computer in question from the domain. (make it part of a temporary work group)
Disconnect the lan cable
restart computer

At the server...
Delete the computer name from the DNS list
Delete the computer object from Active Directory Users and Computers

If using DHCP...,
Note the IP addy (write it down or go by memory), delete the entry which refers to the computer in question.
Exclude that addy from your scope. (doing this will ensure your machine will not grab the same addy)

Now...., just for fun...., verify your host and lmhost files in the %windir%
connect the lan cable.
also for fun...., run ipconfig and make sure your all set as far as addy's go.

re-join your domain.
restart machine...,  verify at your server that all entries are correct in DHCP, DNS and computer object.

Hope this helps.....

I had the same problem and thi si the solution :

http://home.earthlink.net/~lreynol929/ruXP/Startup/FIXING.HTM

Im sure this helps!!!

Niether the registry tweak to tell my XP laptop not to look for remote task scheduler items, nor the GPedit tweak mentioned above fix this grief.  My login script deleting/connecting mapped drives is painfully slow on XP and lightning fast on W2K.  Running the script after login is fully complete is marginally faster than during login--probably because there are fewer running tasks to compete with it!

One thing I note: I have one - and only one out of several mapped drives - that throws up a message about " there are open files and/or incomplete directory searches pending on the connection to 'driveletter' Is it ok to force them closed?(y/n) [N].

The W2K boxes don't throw up that message about that drive letter.  What is different about XP net use than W2k net use that this comes up?

Nick67

Lard tundering and bye d' Jesus

The drive letter mentioned above is my home directory.  I went into AD users and computers and REMOVED it (ie clicked the local path option and left it blank.  I now have lightening speed on my login script again!  Might work for others too!  Either don't use your login script to map the home directory, or don't use AD to map it.  the conflict seems to slow the execution of a mapped drive login script way down

Nick67