I'm seeing unusually slow boot times on Dell Pro 16 PC16250 laptops. Before they're joined to the domain, they boot normally, but afterward they sit on the Dell SafeBIOS splash screen for roughly two minutes before reaching the Windows sign-in screen. Disabling the Netlogon service restores normal boot speed.
There's nothing obvious in the event logs, and moving a test computer to an OU with blocked inheritance did not help. Similar reports suggest a BIOS issue, but all of these systems are running BIOS version 1.18. Other Dell laptop models in the same environment do not have this problem.
I've tested three of these laptops, reset their BIOS settings to factory defaults, and tried both the original Dell image and a fresh Windows installation. Has anyone seen this behavior or found a reliable fix?
4 Answers
The domain connection probably isn’t being processed by the firmware directly. More likely, you’re seeing the Windows boot phase while the OEM splash screen remains visible. Netlogon can still be the trigger, though, because Windows may be waiting on domain discovery, DNS, or a network timeout before showing the sign-in screen.
If these are commonly used with docks, test one completely undocked and with external USB devices removed. Some Dell systems pause during POST while initializing dock, USB, or network hardware. Increasing the BIOS POST delay can sometimes work around docking-related hangs, although it may not explain the Netlogon connection by itself.
I’d also compare a clean Microsoft Windows installation with the factory image and check what Dell utilities and network drivers are installed. A fresh image plus current chipset, storage, network, and firmware drivers can help isolate whether the issue is caused by the image or by the PC firmware. Since all three units behave the same way, a model-specific BIOS or driver interaction seems more likely than a single bad installation.
It may be worth testing a different BIOS version on one machine. Try downgrading from 1.18, or use Dell’s BIOS recovery process, rather than only resetting the settings. A factory reset won’t replace the firmware itself.
That’s what I was thinking too—the SafeBIOS image may just be covering the Windows spinning-circle portion of startup. The delay happens only after the machine is domain joined, and disabling Netlogon makes it disappear.