We're a school district that relies heavily on shared desktops. This includes situations where a substitute teacher logs into a classroom computer for the first time or when a student uses a computer in the lab they haven't logged into before. We're noticing that the initial login times, when a user doesn't already have a profile on that machine, often exceed a minute and sometimes reach two minutes or more. Our setup is quite robust; we have gigabit wired connections to the desktops, 10G+ connections between switches and servers, and there's no network congestion. We use folder redirection for most staff and students but no roaming profiles. All our domain controllers and primary file servers are on a 100% NVMe SAN, and the clients are all SSDs with no traditional hard drives. These long login times occur even during off-peak hours, which suggests potential client-side issues rather than network problems. Are these login durations normal for our hardware setup? Are there tools available that can help us analyze the login process in detail to identify areas for improvement?
6 Answers
A minute or two for setting up a new profile is somewhat normal. I recommend enabling verbose mode for your group policies to see which ones take the longest to apply. You can also model the group policy for both user and machine to track how long each policy is taking. Plus, checking the event logs could reveal issues that are causing delays.
It's pretty standard to experience delays during the first time login due to profile creation and folder redirection, even with fast hardware. So, having login times around 1-2 minutes isn't uncommon in various environments.
While 1-2 minutes is common for first-time login, it can be frustrating. Make sure to review your Group Policies carefully. Sometimes, it's not just the number of policies but also the size and validity of any printer or drive mapping policies that can drag down the login time. You might find ControlUp's login analyzer script helpful for detailed insights: https://www.controlup.com/script-library-posts/Analyze-Logon-Duration/. If it’s Group Policy related, you might want to isolate a test computer and add policies back one at a time to pinpoint the culprit.
If you haven't already, try testing with a clean client install that has no additional software. My suspicion is there might be something in the runonce registry that's slowing things down on first sign-ins.
Having folder redirection combined with a large Desktop folder might be contributing to the slow login times. It's worth checking.
Consider looking into the RAM on your workstations. I faced similar issues a while back with machines that had just 8GB. After upgrading to 16GB, the login delays disappeared.
Absolutely check gpresult to analyze any excessive Group Policies linked to the machine.