Acquire DHCP address before Windows Login

What is the duration of the lease?
Usually they only renew once a week or so.
If you lengthen the lease time they will not need to re aquire with every boot?

Sorry not a lease issue. More about getting the network card(s) initialized sooner. After login the Network Card is (spinning and the network connections are being setup). I want to get this done quicker/faster. Speed up the whole boot process.

You can set a group or local policy setting -

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

Always Wait for Network

Doesn't sound like a network card issue or a DHCP issue.  How long does it take for a user to be logged on from starting the machine?  Are you in an Active Directory domain?

You stated " the network card is circling acquiring a dhcp address after logon"

It only does that if it needs to aquire a new lease.

You can set a group or local policy setting -

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

"Always Wait for Network at Computer Startup and Logon"

Determines whether Windows waits for the network during computer startup and user logon. By default, Windows does not wait for the network to be fully initialized at startup and logon. Existing users are logged on using cached credentials, which results in shorter logon times. Group Policy is applied in the background once the network becomes available.

Two ways come to mind for manually assigning IPs to the machines:

1) On each machine, in  Local Area Connection>Properties>Internet Protocol(TCP/IP)>Properties, you can assign the various properties (IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server address).  The path here applies to an XP machine; Windows 7 will be similar.  

2) In DHCP, you can assign an address to each machine by its network card's MAC address.  

Both ways involve knowing the assignable range of IPs; the second way involves access to DHCP on the server.

Hope this helps!

Sorry guys, I was not clear. This has nothing to do with setting up DHCP or assigning static IPs.
I want the network card to initialize sooner, it looks like it does not finish initializing until during/after login. I want it to initialize earlier, maybe I can change this in the bios or something?

I've seen this before - notably more with laptops than desktops.
The last time I saw it there was a problem with the BIOS.  There was no workaround.

You should be able to verify this by installing a different OS on one of the affected machines and testing again - if the same issue persists its a hardware problem.

Sorry to repeat post but this sounds like your exact request but you've made no comment on it!

You can set a group or local policy setting -

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

"Always Wait for Network at Computer Startup and Logon"

Determines whether Windows waits for the network during computer startup and user logon. By default, Windows does not wait for the network to be fully initialized at startup and logon. Existing users are logged on using cached credentials, which results in shorter logon times. Group Policy is applied in the background once the network becomes available.

Yes it was disabled/not configured.

I noticed that even on servers with Static IP/s I see the network icon spinning with the globe after logon.

If the network location has not been set the Icon will display the spinning circle.
Also, if you are behind a firewall and do not have direct or proxied internet access you will probably see this.

What happens if you enable it and apply the policy?

It was originally enabled. I then disabled it when I read your original post. Waited for replication, gpupdate/force and tried. Really made no difference.

I think I do see an issue with DHCP and Windows 7 Clients. It appears that they are trying to obtain a new DHCP leaser every time the machine is rebooted. I just confirmed this on a few clients.

Logon - obtains new DHCP address. Shows that lease is set for the next 8 days, which is the correct lease duration for our DHCP server.
Then reboot the client, and logon, it obtains the dhcp address again. It is usually the same IP address - I do not see multiple leases issues to the same machine on the dhcp server. Yet every time you restart it will obtain an address again.

Any ideas? The DHCP server looks ok.

Just nice to see you got it sorted...

all the best

Markies

Thanks Mark. Appreciate the suggestions nonetheless.

it was strictly hardware issue. my bad. if you want the points just yell and I will give them to ya.

Can you please share what settings where changed on your switches and or Firewall?