6

I'm having a few issues with a specific GPO that's causing 5+ minute delays on logins (not just initial logins either). The server is running Windows Server 2012

I'm adding printers under Users\Control Panel\Printers (GPP), and I have a specific group of users who need access to all printers which is about 20 or so printers at this stage.

I've added one entry in the GPP page for one printer, so I have around 20 GPP entries. I am not running any item level filtering, they should be a straight mapping.

I have confirmed that each printer is successful in the GP results report.

There are four universal printer drivers that are needed (4 brands of printers in the mix of 20, all on universal drivers), so it's not like there are hundreds of mb's to transfer for each login.

Any ideas what could explain the slow logon time? Or should I just resort to logon scripts to map these printers instead.

Cheers

Update:
Drivers and versions in use:

Lexmark Universal v2 2.1.5.0
Samsung Universal Print Driver 2.3.9.0
HP Universal Printing PCL 6 (v5.6.0) 61.140.4.14430
KX DRIVER for Universal Printing 6.0.2212.0

3
  • Which version/vendor UPD are you using?
    – jscott
    Feb 8, 2013 at 15:12
  • Updated question with the drivers and versions in use
    – Antix
    Feb 8, 2013 at 15:16
  • Not an answer to your question, but if you're using GPP Printers then you should be aware of this useful hotfix. support.microsoft.com/kb/2748246
    – Nic
    Feb 8, 2013 at 15:22

4 Answers 4

5

I had resolved this issue by changing all of the printer mappings in GPP to Update.

I had set them on Replace when the slowness was occurring and from what I could gather, every time someone logged onto the machine it would completely re-install all of the printer drivers. And for some people this meant all of the drivers.

Now logins are usually quite fast, the initial login after a re-image can be a little on the slow side but every login after that is pretty quick.

1

Using a logon script for this would most likely help, or at least help isolate the problem, by making the printer mapping asynchronous with respect to the logon. It is possible that the driver may cause the OS to poll each printer for something, or otherwise take a long time to set up a new device; it's also possible that registry locking is the reason for the delay.

If you do this, and the problem is actually the printer mapping, be aware that some users might place helpdesk calls complaining that their printers aren't there when in fact they just needed to wait for the mapping to finish (or if they managed to kill the logon script). It might be useful to map only some printers for each user, despite the administrative overhead this causes.

1

Presuming that you've checked the event log, and that that hasn't yielded any useful information, you may want to monitor the processes running on the host remotely so you can see what's actually happening during this delay.

An Open Source remote process monitor can be found here http://sourceforge.net/projects/yaprocmon/ - it's a bit rough around the edges, but it gets the job done.

Just install on your admin workstation and point it at the machine with issues. Hopefully it'll give you a better idea of what's happening.

0

I have had much better success using the Printer Management Console option vs GPP for printer deployment (available in Windows Server 2003r2+ - you will need to update your domain functional level too).

In your case, I would recommend using the per user printer deployment using the Printer Management Console (you can also do per computer printer deployments too).

Note that the Printer Management Console does use native Group Policy, i.e. it is not a third party add on. More information available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753109%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .